Control inputField format about terminal-kit HOT 14 CLOSED

Customization is possible, but not syntax highlighting, i.e. you can set the style and color for the whole text, but not per character.

It is an interesting feature, but there is no plan for that ATM.

Can you describe me your use case? (more background)

from terminal-kit.

Sure : the terminal command expect arguments / filenames, and I would like to :

• Highlight typos (unexisting arguments)
• underline filenames
• (EVENTUALLY) write a preview of what pressing TAB would autocomplete too, in a light color on the right of the cursor like this :

from terminal-kit.

Any idea about the eventual API?

from terminal-kit.

Yep sure I'm thinking it would look something like this I guess :

{
   format : function(previous (all previous token), current, term)
}

the function would be called per-token (ex : git clone http://.... would be 3 token : git, clone and the url) and each token would be returned as so :

function (previous, current, term) {
    if(!exists(current)) {
       return term.red("current")
    } 
    else if(previous == "git clone") { 
        return checkURL(current) ? term.underline(current) : term.red(current)
    }
    else {
         return term.green(current)
    }
}

For the placeholder-prediction, I would say that when the autoCompleter function return an array the first element gets displayed as "placeholder" like in the screen, if it returns a string it gets displayed.

What do you think?

from terminal-kit.

The API looks good to me, however it would be a nightmare to implement it ^^

Mostly because of the string length management (how many columns and lines are covered by the input field, and so on).
Terminals are really old things that have not evolved a bit for decades, they lack critical features.

If one day I implement this feature, I will surely do it using the Terminal-kit ScreenBuffer, or a TextBuffer/ScreenBuffer combo. But the API will certainly be less user-friendly.

Do you intend to write a kind of next gen Bash?

from terminal-kit.

Ok, I will give it a try...

from terminal-kit.

Ok I was overestimating the difficulty, in fact it was fairly straightforward to implement.

But I'm still unsure about the API.
Maybe it will land tomorrow or monday on master, once I'm satisfied.

from terminal-kit.

Ok, it's done: token hilighting (color, style) and the auto-completion preview.
It landed on version 0.27.1.

The doc is not updated ATM (will do it in few days), but you can look at the sample file sample/input-field-shell-test.js, or look at this extract:

var term = require( 'terminal-kit' ).terminal ;

term( '> ' ) ;

var autoComplete = [
    'dnf install' ,
    'dnf install nodejs' ,
    'dnf search' ,
    'sudo' ,
    'sudo dnf install' ,
    'sudo dnf install nodejs' ,
    'sudo dnf search' ,
] ;

term.inputField(
    {
        autoComplete: autoComplete ,
        autoCompleteHint: true ,
        tokenHook: function( token , isEndOfInput , previousTokens , term , config ) {
            var previousText = previousTokens.join( ' ' ) ;
            
            switch ( token )
            {
                case 'sudo' :
                    config.style = term.red ;
                    return previousTokens.length ? null : term.bold.red ;
                case 'dnf' :
                    return previousText === '' || previousText === 'sudo' ? term.brightMagenta : null ;
                case 'install' :
                    config.style = term.brightBlue ;
                    config.hintStyle = term.brightBlack.italic ;
                    return previousText === 'dnf' || previousText === 'sudo dnf' ? term.brightYellow : null ;
                case 'search' :
                    config.style = term.brightBlue ;
                    return previousText === 'dnf' || previousText === 'sudo dnf' ? term.brightCyan : null ;
            }
        }
    } ,
    function( error , input ) {

        term.green( "\nYour command is: '%s'\n" , input ) ;
        process.exit() ;
    }
) ;

The autoCompleteHint option is the auto-completion preview. You can customize its style with the hintStyle option.

from terminal-kit.

Hey @cronvel
Really nice work, I'll give it a try ASAP, thanks !
Yes this is what I'm writing (I'm lacking a terminal alternative that I could use on all my computers no matter the OS)

from terminal-kit.

As of v 0.28.0, I have changed the tokenHook function's argument to ( token , isEndOfInput , previousTokens , term , config ).

I edited the previous example.

• isEndOfInput boolean true if this is the last token and if it ends the input string (e.g. it is possible for the last token to be followed by some blank char, in that case isEndOfInput would be false)

from terminal-kit.

@azukaar @yann-stepienik-cko If you are interested, I made a small shell prototype to test all those features: ngsh.

When you will start working on your shell, I would appreciate to have a look at it! Drop me comment ;)

from terminal-kit.

Hey @cronvel I did a bit more work on the project I'll show it to you, but I just realise that the whole purpose of the project was kind of defeated because of #16, do you think this issue is patch-able, or do I need to not use inputField ?

from terminal-kit.

@azukaar @yann-stepienik-cko If you want to target Windows platform, that's certainly a problem, with or without .inputField(), with or without Terminal-Kit.
Windows terminals just lack critical features for that.

FYI readline (built-in support in Node.js) usually manages to work well on those impossible terminals at the cost of really complex (and awful) hacks. However, readline does not allow you syntax hilighting.

from terminal-kit.

@cronvel Will look at it more in details this week end

from terminal-kit.