Erbsland Color Terminal Library for C++

✔ Unicode-safe terminal layout
✔ Cross-platform terminal abstraction
✔ Clean C++20 API for colorful terminal output

The Erbsland Color Terminal Library is a lightweight C++20 static library for building rich terminal applications.

It provides reliable building blocks for colorful terminal output, Unicode-aware text handling, interactive input, and 2D geometry utilities. These components help you build terminal user interfaces, command-line tools, and even terminal games with far less low-level boilerplate.

The library is designed to be lightweight, expressive, and portable, with native support for Linux, macOS, and Windows terminals.

Features

Low-Level Terminal Abstraction

The low-level layer provides portable building blocks for terminal interaction.

• Cross-platform terminal backend for Linux, macOS, and Windows — write once and compile everywhere
• Direct control over colors, cursor positioning, and screen management
• Automatic terminal detection and initialization
• Convenient colored text output using ANSI escape sequences
• Optional text-only mode for non-interactive applications
• Unicode-aware terminal strings with accurate display-width calculation
• Automatic handling of wide and combined Unicode code points
• Detection and rejection of invalid UTF-8 sequences
• Interactive key input and traditional line-based input
• Geometry utilities for positions, sizes, rectangles, anchors, alignment, margins, and bitmaps
• Efficient line buffering for handling large amounts of terminal output
• Automatic terminal state restoration on exit, including unexpected exits caused by signals

High-Level Terminal Utilities

The high-level layer builds on the low-level primitives to simplify the implementation of complex terminal interfaces.

• Efficient cell buffer classes for preparing terminal output
• Automatic back-buffering and delta screen updates
• Automatic switching to the alternate screen and restoration on exit
• View system to render sections of buffers on screen
• Frame and rectangle drawing utilities
• Character-combination framework for building block-based terminal graphics
• Tile-9 fill and tile-16 frame drawing helpers
• Custom font support
• Text wrapping and alignment utilities
• Bitmap font rendering for large terminal text
• Color sequences and animated color effects
• Bitmap utilities for generating masks and rendering bitmaps to the screen

Documentation

Full documentation, tutorials, and API references are available at:

→ https://color-term.erbsland.dev

The documentation includes:

• Step-by-step tutorial
• Integration and usage guides
• Complete API reference
• Build and development instructions

Installation

The recommended way to use the library is by including it directly in your CMake project.

Clone the repository and add it as a subdirectory:

git clone https://github.com/erbsland-dev/erbsland-cpp-color-term.git

Then include it in your CMakeLists.txt.

Quick Start

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.28)
project(ExampleProject)

add_subdirectory(erbsland-cpp-color-term)

add_executable(example src/main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(example PRIVATE erbsland-color-term)

Example program:

#include <erbsland/cterm/Terminal.hpp>

using namespace erbsland::cterm;

auto main() -> int {
    auto terminal = Terminal{{80, 25}};
    terminal.initializeScreen();

    terminal.printLine(fg::BrightGreen, "Hello terminal.");

    terminal.restoreScreen();
    return 0;
}

Building the Library

Configure and build the project with CMake:

cmake -S . -B cmake-build-debug -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
cmake --build cmake-build-debug

Running the Unit Tests

The project includes standalone unit tests.

ctest --test-dir cmake-build-debug --output-on-failure

Requirements

• C++20 compatible compiler
• CMake 3.28+
• Python 3 (used by the build tooling)

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Tobias Erbsland
https://erbsland.dev

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.