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Provide a simplified terminal capability API #25

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alexrp opened this issue Nov 20, 2021 · 5 comments
Open

Provide a simplified terminal capability API #25

alexrp opened this issue Nov 20, 2021 · 5 comments
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area: build Issues related to the build system. area: capabilities Issues related to the Terminfo capabilities API. area: documentation Issues related to the documentation. area: samples Issues related to the sample projects. state: approved Enhancements and tasks that have been approved.
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@alexrp
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alexrp commented Nov 20, 2021

This API will probably wrap TermInfo.

The API should be simplified so as to not bother with quirks of ancient terminals and emulators almost nobody uses anymore.

@alexrp alexrp added type: feature state: approved Enhancements and tasks that have been approved. area: samples Issues related to the sample projects. labels Nov 20, 2021
@alexrp alexrp self-assigned this Nov 20, 2021
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alexrp commented Nov 21, 2021

We probably won't have to use this API in the library itself. Once #22 is implemented, we can just leave it up to users to decide how hard they want to try to follow terminal capability information while constructing escape sequences.

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alexrp commented Nov 25, 2021

One option for implementing this would be to bundle the compiled terminfo files. They could be embedded as resources in a separate System.Terminal.Capabilities.dll which would expose a TerminalCapabilities class for accessing them. That way, users wouldn't have to worry about missing a terminfo database on Windows. This would of course be a separate NuGet package since the complete terminfo database is a bit large for the core package.

@alexrp alexrp added area: capabilities Issues related to the Terminfo capabilities API. area: documentation Issues related to the documentation. and removed area: api labels Nov 28, 2021
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alexrp commented Dec 6, 2021

The only question that really remains is: Where should the build of the package fetch the compiled terminfo files from?

@alexrp alexrp modified the milestones: v1.0, v2.0 Dec 20, 2021
@alexrp alexrp added the area: build Issues related to the build system. label Dec 30, 2021
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alexrp commented Dec 30, 2021

Another option would be to embed terminfo.src and parse that instead of the compiled files.

Yet another option, if we're embedding the database anyway, would be to process it during build and just use a C# source generator to emit all the relevant data as C# code...

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alexrp commented Dec 14, 2023

I think processing the database from source is a non-starter; I don't want to essentially reinvent tic. I also want the Cathode build process to remain super simple (./cake).

So, I think what we'll do is just store the compressed description files in the repository. That's a bit unfortunate, but they don't evolve that often, so the repository size shouldn't be affected too much. We can then have a script that be run manually to update the descriptions (likely by grabbing an ncurses-term package from one of the major Linux distributions).

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Labels
area: build Issues related to the build system. area: capabilities Issues related to the Terminfo capabilities API. area: documentation Issues related to the documentation. area: samples Issues related to the sample projects. state: approved Enhancements and tasks that have been approved.
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