cursed

From August 2017 to present

cursed is a minimalist C++ (2011 or above) framework that allows you to build user interfaces for your applications using ncursesw. This framework provides a high-level abstraction for creating windows and components (buttons, labels, text boxes, etc.). You can also extend the existing components or create your own.

Most GNU/Linux distributions out there came with ncurses and ncursesw runtime by default. To use cursed in your applications, you only need to install the ncursesw development package.

This framework is still in development. For now, you can use cursed to create windows with the following themeable components:

Label: display static information with minimal formating capabilities (hightlight and underline);
TextBox: enable the user to input text information (limited to ASCII letters, numbers and symbols);
Button: perform actions when pressed (functions or lambda expressions);
Checkbox: enable the user to make a binary choice.

Example

Application app;

const int height = 8;
const int width  = 60;
int y = (app.screenHeight() - height) / 2;
int x = (app.screenWidth() - width) / 2;

Window window(app, L"Sample Application", height, width, y, x);

Label label(window,
	L"This is a sample application "
	"using *cursed* framework!",   // text
	window.getClientHeight() - 2,  // height
	window.getClientWidth(),       // width
	0,                             // y
	0 );                           // x

Button button(window,
	L"Close",                                                     // text
	window.getClientHeight() - 1,                                 // y
	(window.getClientWidth() - Button::scale(L"Close")) / 2,      // x
	[](Button &button) -> void { button.getParent().close(); } ); // action

window.setActive(button);
window.showModal();

Building the framework

To build cursed you need cmake and ncursesw headers. If you are using Debian/Ubuntu, you can use the following command to install everything:

# sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev cmake

To download, build and install cursed, use the following commands:

# git clone https://github.com/brunexgeek/cursed.git
# mkdir cursed/build
# cd cursed/build
# cmake ..
# make
# sudo make install

Building applications

Change your build process to link with both cursed and ncursesw.

# g++ -std=c++11 program.cpp -lcursed -lncursesw

Task list

The following components/features are in development:

Implement radio button component
Hot keys (ALT+<letter> to activate/focus components)

The following components/features are in the roadmap:

Implement menu and menu bar components

License

Except where explicitly indicated otherwise, all source code of this project is provide under Apache License 2.0.