peterbrittain/asciimatics
Asciimatics
Asciimatics is a cross-platform terminal user interface framework and console wrapper. It functions as a curses-compatible library providing a toolkit for building interactive text-based applications, an ASCII art generator, and a terminal animation engine.
The project distinguishes itself through a visual effects engine capable of rendering sprites, particle systems, and anti-aliased lines. It includes specialized systems for creating moving text-based graphics and tools for converting image files into character-based representations.
The framework covers core terminal management including non-blocking keyboard and mouse input handling, cursor styling, and window resize detection. It provides a coordinate-based drawing engine and widget-based layout composition for arranging interactive elements like buttons and text boxes.
The library abstracts the differences between Unix-like termios and Windows console APIs to ensure consistent visual rendering across different operating systems.
Features
- Terminal User Interface Frameworks - Serves as a comprehensive framework for building interactive, text-based user interfaces across multiple platforms.
- Text User Interface Development - Provides a full framework for building interactive, full-screen terminal applications with layout and widget support.
- Cross-Platform Visualizations - Ensures consistent rendering of visual elements and layouts across different operating systems and terminal environments.
- Cross-Platform Console Tooling - Provides utilities to ensure that terminal displays, including cursor and text styling, behave consistently across platforms.
- Character Grid Drawing - Provides a drawing engine that calculates character placement within a fixed text grid for geometric shapes.
- Cell-Based Grid Renderers - Uses a cell-based grid renderer to maintain an internal screen buffer and minimize terminal updates.
- Console Wrappers - Acts as an abstraction layer that encapsulates console processes to manage input and output streams cross-platform.
- Cross-Platform Terminal Abstractions - Provides a unified interface by abstracting the differences between Unix-like termios and Windows console APIs.
- Curses-Compatible Implementations - Implements an API compatible with the curses standard for cross-platform terminal screen manipulation.
- Non-Blocking Standard Input Readers - Provides mechanisms to capture keyboard and mouse input from the terminal without blocking application execution.
- ANSI Escape Sequence Renderers - Implements an engine that generates raw terminal control codes to manipulate text color and formatting across platforms.
- Screen Composition Widgets - Provides a system for composing full-screen layouts using reusable widgets with encapsulated layout and behavior.
- Terminal Cursor Controllers - Provides utilities for programmatic cursor positioning and state management using terminal escape sequences.
- Event-Driven Input Handlers - Implements an asynchronous event loop to capture keyboard and mouse input to trigger application actions.
- Interactive Terminal Interfaces - Handles non-blocking keyboard and mouse input to drive complex user sessions inside a console.
- Terminal Widget Layouts - Provides a widget-based layout system for arranging interactive components in a structured terminal grid.
- Terminal Dimension Tracking - Implements automatic detection of terminal window resizing to ensure layouts update dynamically.
- Textual Anti-Aliasing - Implements techniques for smoothing the edges of geometric shapes using character variations in a text environment.
- ASCII Art Generators - Includes tools for converting raster images into text-based ASCII art.
- Terminal Animations - Provides a system for creating moving text-based graphics using colors and effects inside a terminal.
- ASCII Visual Effects - Includes a visual effects engine for generating dynamic text-based animations using sprites and particle systems.
- Terminal Graphics Rendering - Implements a system for rendering high-fidelity visual content and image conversions within terminal emulators.
- Image-to-ASCII Converters - Ships tools that process visual image files into ASCII text representations.
- Terminal Animations - Provides an engine for rendering visual effects and animated displays specifically within terminal emulators.
- CLI Development - Provides curses-like terminal UI capabilities and animations.
- Command Line Interface - Library for creating text-based UIs and animations.
- Command Line Interfaces - Library for creating text-based UIs and animations.
- Terminal and TUI Tools - Cross-platform library for creating complex terminal animations and UIs.
- Terminal UI Tools - Cross-platform library for full-screen terminal UIs.
Star history
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