neo-blessed/CHANGELOG.md

3.1 KiB

Blessed v0.1.0 - new terminal goodies for node.js

blessed

The features demonstrated in the above gif element transparency/shadow and border docking.

New useful options for your typewriter application:

  • transparent option - Lower element opacity to 50%. This will display dimmed elements and content behind the foreground element using a naive color blending function (good enough for a terminal's limited amount of colors). works best with 256color terminals. (see widget-shadow.js)

  • shadow option - Give the element a translucent shadow. Automatically darkens the background behind it. (see widget-shadow.js)

  • dockBorders option - Element borders will automatically "dock" to each other. Instead of overlapping the borders end up connecting. (see widget-dock.js)

  • autoPadding default - Auto padding is now enabled by default, meaning blessed will automatically position elements inside their parent's border.

  • rleft property - Relative offsets are now default element properties (left instead of rleft).

  • draggable property - Make any element draggable with the mouse. (see widget-shadow.js or widget-dock.js)

  • Table and ListTable elements - Tables with a high quality rendering. (see widget-table.js and widget-listtable.js)

  • Log element - A top to bottom logger box with scrollback and other features. (see widget-log.js)

  • Obscurable borders - In addition to docking borders, it's possible to obscure borders by sliding them off the screen with negative offsets. (see widget-dock.js)

  • Percentage expressions - Like CSS, arithmetic can now be performed on percentages. e.g. width: '50%-1'. This is useful for overlapping borders on elements with a percentage width. (see widget-dock.js)

Other features that weren't mentioned before:

  • setHover option - Set a hover text box to follow cursor on mouseover, similar to how a web browser handles the "title" attribute. (see widget.js)

  • Terminal element - Spin up a pseudo terminal as a blessed element. useful for writing a terminal multiplexer. (requires term.js and pty.js as optional dependencies). (see example/multiplex.js)

  • Image element - Uses w3mimgdisplay to draw real images your terminal. this is much easier than calling w3mimgdisplay by hand. Image elements behave like any other element, although it is wise to use width: 'shrink', height: 'shrink'. (see widget-image.js)


The major things that justified the 0.1.0 release were fixes and stabilization of api (autoPadding/rleft/left). Scrolling boxes were almost completely revamped to work a bit smarter.


Things yet to come:

  • @secrettriangle's improvements for textareas - This allows for real text navigation.

  • Gravity and margin layouts

This is something that's been in the idea bin for a while. Every element could potentially have properties like:

  gravity: 'bottomleft',
  margin: 5,
``

In other words, just a more complex `float` system than what the CSSOM is used
to.