Ubuntu Manpage: notcurses - TUI library for modern terminal emulators

Provided by: libnotcurses-core-dev_3.0.7+dfsg.1-1ubuntu1_amd64

NAME

       notcurses - TUI library for modern terminal emulators

SYNOPSIS

       #include <notcurses/notcurses.h> or #include <notcurses/notcurses-core.h>

       -lnotcurses-core -lnotcurses or -lnotcurses-core

DESCRIPTION

Notcurses builds atop the terminfo(5) abstraction layer to provide reasonably portable
vivid character displays. It is an intellectual descendant of ncurses(3NCURSES), but goes
beyond that library (and the X/Open Curses API it implements).

A program wishing to use Notcurses will need to link it, ideally using the output of pkg-
config --libs notcurses (see pkg-config(1)). It is advised to compile with the output of
pkg-config --cflags notcurses. If using CMake, a support file is provided, and can be
accessed as Notcurses (see cmake(1)). If multimedia capabilities are not needed, it is
possible to link against a minimal Notcurses using pkg-config --libs notcurses-core.

notcurses_init(3) can then be used to initialize a Notcurses instance for a given FILE*
(usually stdout, usually attached to a terminal).

The alternate screen
Many terminals provide an "alternate screen" with its own contents, no scrollback buffer,
and no scrolling. Entering the alternate screen replaces the current visible contents
wholesale, as does returning to the regular screen. Notcurses refers to the alternate
screen's semantics as "TUI mode", and the regular screen's semantics as "CLI mode". It is
possible to swap between the two modes at runtime using
notcurses_leave_alternate_screen(3) and notcurses_enter_alternate_screen(3). Notcurses
will enter TUI mode by default on startup; to prevent this, use
NCOPTION_NO_ALTERNATE_SCREEN as described in notcurses_init(3). On program exit,
Notcurses will always return to the regular screen, independent of the screen being used
on program start.

Construction
Before calling into Notcurses—and usually as one of the first calls of the program—be sure
to call setlocale with an appropriate UTF-8 LC_ALL locale. It is usually appropriate to
use setlocale(LC_ALL, ""), relying on the user to properly set the LANG environment
variable. Notcurses will refuse to start if nl_langinfo(3) doesn't indicate UTF-8 or
ANSI_X3.4-1968 (aka US-ASCII). Be aware that capabilities are substantially reduced in
ASCII.

notcurses_init(3) accepts a struct notcurses_options allowing fine-grained control of
Notcurses behavior, including signal handlers, alternative screens, and overriding the
TERM environment variable. A terminfo entry appropriate for the actual terminal must be
available.

ncdirect_init(3) makes available a restricted subset of Notcurses functionality. This
subset is intended to be interleaved with user-generated output, and is limited to
coloring and styling. Direct mode is documented in notcurses_direct(3).

Only one context can be active in a process at a time, whether direct mode (struct
ncdirect) or rendered mode (struct notcurses).

Output
All output is performed on struct ncplanes (see Ncplanes below). Output is not visible
until explicitly rendered via notcurses_render(3). Information on drawing functions is
available at notcurses_output(3).

Input
Notcurses supports input from keyboards (via stdin) and pointing devices (via a broker
such as GPM, X, or Wayland). Input is delivered as 32-bit Unicode code points.
Synthesized events such as mouse button presses and arrow keys are mapped into Unicode's
Supplementary Private Use Area-B (https://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U100000.pdf).
Information on input is available at notcurses_input(3). The included tool notcurses-
input(1) can be used to test input decoding.

Ncpiles
A given notcurses context is made up of one or more piles. Piles provide distinct
rendering contexts: a thread can be rendering or mutating one pile, while another thread
concurrently renders or mutates another pile. A pile is made up of planes, totally
ordered on a z-axis. In addition to the z-ordering, the planes of a pile are bound in a
forest (a set of directed, acyclic graphs). Those planes which are not bound to some
other plane constitute the root planes of a pile. A pile is destroyed when all its planes
are destroyed, or moved to other piles. Since the standard plane (see below) always
exists, and cannot be moved to another pile, one pile always exists, known as the standard
pile.

Note that rasterizing a pile will replace all content within its margins.

For more information, see notcurses_pile(3).

Ncplanes
Following initialization, a single ncplane exists, the "standard plane" (see
notcurses_stdplane(3)). This plane cannot be destroyed nor manually resized, and is
always exactly as large as the screen (if run without a TTY, the "screen" is assumed to be
80x24 cells). Further ncplanes can be created with ncplane_create(3). A total z-ordering
always exists on the set of ncplanes, and new ncplanes are placed at the top of the z-
buffer. Ncplanes can be larger, smaller, or the same size as the physical screen, and can
be placed anywhere relative to it (including entirely off-screen). Ncplanes are made up
of nccells (see NcCells below). Information on ncplanes is available at
notcurses_plane(3).

NcCells
nccells make up the framebuffers backing each ncplane, one cell per coordinate, one
extended grapheme cluster (see unicode(7)) per cell. An nccell consists of a gcluster
(either a directly-encoded 7-bit ASCII character (see ascii(7)), or a 25-bit index into
the ncplane's egcpool), a set of attributes, and two channels (one for the foreground, and
one for the background—see notcurses_channels(3)). Information on cells is available at
notcurses_cell(3).

It is not usually necessary for users to interact directly with nccells. They are
typically encountered when retrieving data from ncplanes or the rendered scene (see e.g.
ncplane_at_yx(3)), or to achieve peak performance when a particular EGC is heavily reused
within a plane.

Visuals
Bitmaps can be loaded from disk or memory, or even synthesized from the content of
existing planes. These are stored in ncvisual objects, described in notcurses_visual(3).
Visuals can be rendered to arbitrarily many planes using a variety of blitters, varying in
their aspect ratios and resolution. If the terminal supports a pixel protocol such as
Sixel or Kitty, it is possible to render bitmaps at the pixel level (as opposed to the
cell level, using geometric glyphs). Otherwise, various Unicode-based blitters are
available to render bitmaps in the text paradigm.

Widgets
A few high-level widgets are included, all built atop ncplanes:

• notcurses_fds(3) for dumping file descriptors/subprocesses to a plane

• notcurses_menu(3) for menu bars at the top or bottom of the screen

• notcurses_multiselector(3) for selecting one or more items from a set

• notcurses_plot(3) for drawing histograms and lineplots

• notcurses_progbar(3) for drawing progress bars

• notcurses_reader(3) for free-form input data

• notcurses_reel(3) for hierarchal display of block-based data

• notcurses_tabbed(3) for tabbed interfaces

• notcurses_selector(3) for selecting one item from a set

• notcurses_tree(3) for hierarchal display of line-based data

Threads
Notcurses explicitly supports use in multithreaded environments, but it does not itself
perform any locking.

• Only one pile's rendered frame can be rasterized at a time, and it is not safe to
concurrently render that pile. It is safe to rasterize a frame while rendering some
other pile.

• It is otherwise always safe to operate concurrently on distinct piles.

• It is not safe to render a pile while concurrently modifying that pile.

• It is safe to output to multiple distinct ncplanes at the same time, even within the
same pile.

• It is safe to output to ncplanes while adding or deleting some other ncplane.

• It is not safe for multiple threads to output to the same ncplane.

• It is not safe to add, delete, or reorder ncplanes within a single pile from multiple
threads.

Only one thread may call notcurses_get(3) or any other input-related thread at a time, but
it is safe to call for input while another thread renders.

Since multiple threads can concurrently manipulate distinct ncplanes, peak performance
might require dividing the screen into several planes, and manipulating them from multiple
threads.

Destruction
Before exiting, notcurses_stop(3) should be called. In addition to freeing up resources,
this is necessary to restore the terminal to a state useful for the shell. By default,
notcurses_init(3) installs signal handlers to catch all signals which would normally
terminate the process. The new handlers will try to call notcurses_stop(3), and then
propagate the received signal to the previous action.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       The  TERM  environment variable ought be correctly defined.  It will be used to index into
       the terminfo(5) database by way of setupterm(3NCURSES).  Notcurses will  additionally  use
       TERM_PROGRAM to distinguish certain terminals.

       If the COLORTERM environment variable is defined as "24bit" or "truecolor", Notcurses will
       assume the terminal capable of 24-bit RGB color, even in the  absence  of  "RGB"  or  "Tc"
       capabilities in terminfo.

       If  the  NOTCURSES_LOGLEVEL  environment variable is defined as a number between -1 and 8,
       inclusive, that will override any logging level specified in the struct  notcurses_options
       provided to notcurses_init(3).

       The LOGNAME environment variable, if defined, will be used for notcurses_accountname(3).

NOTES

       When  using  the C++ wrappers, NCPP_EXCEPTIONS_PLEASE can be defined in order to turn most
       error returns into exceptions.

AUTHORS