turbo-tui

Borland Turbo Vision windowing patterns for Ratatui.

Overlapping windows, modal dialogs, dropdown menus, and more — all rendering through Ratatui's Frame/Buffer system.

Features

• Command System — u16 command IDs with bitfield enable/disable
• View Trait — Base trait with ViewId, focus management, state flags
• Container — Z-order management, three-phase event dispatch
• Overlapping Windows — Drag by title bar, resize from corner, zoom toggle
• Modal Dialogs — Self-contained event loop, OK/Cancel/Yes/No
• Menu Bar — Dropdown submenus via OverlayManager, ~X~ hotkey markers, Alt+Letter
• Status Bar — Context-sensitive shortcuts, click-to-execute
• Scrollbars — Vertical/horizontal with draggable thumb, active/inactive styling
• JSON Themes — 6 built-in themes with full JSON serialization

Status

🟢 v0.2.2 — Released — 335 tests, 21 source files, ~15,000 lines. Clippy pedantic clean, zero unsafe.

Quick Start

[dependencies]
turbo-tui = { git = "https://github.com/four-bytes/turbo-tui" }

Architecture

turbo-tui does not replace Ratatui — it extends it. All rendering goes through Ratatui's Frame and Buffer.

Application
└── Ratatui Terminal
    └── turbo-tui views
        ├── Desktop (background + window manager)
        │   ├── Window 1 (back)
        │   ├── Window 2
        │   └── Window N (front/focused)
        ├── MenuBar (optional)
        └── StatusBar (optional)

Inspiration

Having grown up with Turbo Pascal 5, TASM, and later Borland Pascal for Protected Mode — the Turbo Vision UI framework left a lasting impression. This crate brings those Borland Turbo Vision patterns (1991) to modern Rust terminal applications. The original TV powered Turbo Pascal and Turbo C++ IDEs. Norton Commander's dual-panel paradigm will also influence future development.

License

MIT — see LICENSE