klamonte / Jexer
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JEXER HAS MOVED TO GITLAB
Hello GitHub users. Jexer's official home is over at GitLab: https://gitlab.com/klamonte/jexer .
Jexer - Java Text User Interface library
This library implements a text-based windowing system loosely reminiscent of Borland's Turbo Vision system. It looks like this:
Jexer works on both Xterm-like terminals and Swing, and supports images in both Xterm and Swing. On Swing, images are true color:
On Xterm, images are dithered to a common palette:
License
Jexer is available to all under the MIT License. See the file LICENSE for the full license text.
Obtaining Jexer
Jexer is available on Maven Central:
<dependency>
<groupId>com.gitlab.klamonte</groupId>
<artifactId>jexer</artifactId>
<version>0.3.0</version>
</dependency>
Binary releases are available on SourceForge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/jexer/files/jexer/
The Jexer source code is hosted at: https://gitlab.com/klamonte/jexer
Documentation
Programming Examples
The examples/ folder currently contains:
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A prototype tiling window manager in less than 250 lines of code.
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A prototype image thumbnail viewer in less than 350 lines of code.
jexer.demos contains official demos showing all of the existing UI controls. The demos can be run as follows:
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'java -jar jexer.jar' . This will use System.in/out with Xterm-like sequences on non-Windows non-Mac platforms. On Windows and Mac it will use a Swing JFrame.
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'java -Djexer.Swing=true -jar jexer.jar' . This will always use Swing on any platform.
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'java -cp jexer.jar jexer.demos.Demo2 PORT' (where PORT is a number to run the TCP daemon on). This will use the Xterm backend on a telnet server that will update with screen size changes.
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'java -cp jexer.jar jexer.demos.Demo3' . This will use System.in/out with Xterm-like sequences. One can see in the code how to pass a different InputReader and OutputReader to TApplication, permitting a different encoding than UTF-8.
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'java -cp jexer.jar jexer.demos.Demo4' . This demonstrates hidden windows and a custom TDesktop.
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'java -cp jexer.jar jexer.demos.Demo5' . This demonstrates two demo applications using different fonts in the same Swing frame.
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'java -cp jexer.jar jexer.demos.Demo6' . This demonstrates two applications performing I/O across three screens: an Xterm screen and Swing screen, monitored from a third Swing screen.
More Screenshots
Terminal Support
The table below lists terminals tested against Jexer's Xterm backend:
| Terminal | Environment | Mouse Click | Mouse Cursor | Images |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| xterm | X11 | yes | yes | yes |
| lcxterm(3) | CLI, Linux console | yes | yes | no |
| rxvt-unicode | X11 | yes | yes | no(2) |
| alacritty(3) | X11 | yes | yes | no |
| gnome-terminal | X11 | yes | yes | no |
| xfce4-terminal | X11 | yes | yes | no |
| mlterm | X11 | yes | yes | no(5) |
| aminal(3) | X11 | yes | no | no |
| konsole | X11 | yes | no | no |
| yakuake | X11 | yes | no | no |
| screen | CLI | yes(1) | yes(1) | no(2) |
| tmux | CLI | yes(1) | yes(1) | no |
| putty | X11, Windows | yes | no | no(2) |
| Linux | Linux console | no | no | no(2) |
| qodem(3) | CLI, Linux console | yes | yes(4) | no |
| qodem-x11(3) | X11 | yes | no | no |
1 - Requires mouse support from host terminal.
2 - Also fails to filter out sixel data, leaving garbage on screen.
3 - Latest in repository.
4 - Requires TERM=xterm-1003 before starting.
5 - Opening image crashes terminal.
See Also
-
Tranquil Java IDE is a TUI-based integrated development environment for the Java language that was built using a very lightly modified GPL version of Jexer. TJ provided a real-world use case to shake out numerous bugs and limitations of Jexer.
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LCXterm is a curses-based terminal emulator that allows one to use Jexer with full support on the raw Linux console.
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ptypipe is a small C utility that permits a Jexer TTerminalWindow to resize the running shell when its window is resized.
Acknowledgements
Jexer makes use of the Terminus TrueType font made available here .