textual GUI using only part of the terminal

morgon has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi,

I have a very basic understanding of curses to build full-screen text GUIs, but I cannot figure out if it is possible to build a text-based GUI in Perl that only uses part of the terminal screen estate.

What I mean is something like the "fzf" tool (which is written in go) does. Usually it takes over the whole terminal, but when supplying an argument like "--height 50%" it only takes a part of the terminal screen size, but within that part there is a GUI.

Is is possible to do something like that in Perl (using curses or something else)?

Many thanks.

Comment on textual GUI using only part of the terminal

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Re: textual GUI using only part of the terminal -- 3 options by Discipulus (Canon) on Jun 27, 2017 at 07:57 UTC
hello morgon, you are probably looking for Term::Visual from the docs: split-terminal user interface. Term::Visual is a "visual" terminal interface for curses applications. It provides the split-screen interface you may have seen in console based IRC and MUD clients. I never used it but it seems very close to your needs: do not expect zooming features anyway. Another viable option can be Curses::UI look at the picture in an external website. Also Term::Cap can be used to have the screen partitioned: see Pure Perl Split Screen for an example by blindluke. L* There are no rules, there are no thumbs.. Reinvent the wheel, then learn The Wheel; may be one day you reinvent one of THE WHEELS.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: textual GUI using only part of the terminal -- 3 options by morgon (Priest) on Jun 27, 2017 at 13:40 UTC
Unfortunately neither of these modules does what I want - at least I cannot see it. Both take over the whole terminal screen estate while I am looking for a way to have the GUI use only part of it. But never mind - it's not something I need, I am only curious as to whether it would be possible at all.	[reply]
Re: textual GUI using only part of the terminal by zentara (Cardinal) on Jun 27, 2017 at 13:11 UTC
Using Tmux is the way to go. There are numerous short tutorials on youtube. I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. ..... an animated JAPH	[reply]
Re: textual GUI using only part of the terminal by Anonymous Monk on Jun 26, 2017 at 22:51 UTC
According to the docs fzf can integrate with tmux for the terminal splitting. That's probably easier, just use screen or tmux to run your script in one pane and a regular terminal in the other. But if you do want to reinvent the wheel, then yea, Curses would be one way.	[reply]
Re^2: textual GUI using only part of the terminal by morgon (Priest) on Jun 26, 2017 at 22:57 UTC
Are you positive that Curses can do that or are you only guessing? If you know could you show me how one would go about it? And sure, a tmux pane would achieve something similar, but that is not my question.	[reply]
Re^3: textual GUI using only part of the terminal by Anonymous Monk on Jun 26, 2017 at 23:19 UTC
Are you positive that Curses can do that or are you only guessing? Other guy mean that tmux is created using libevent and ncurses -- can you reinvent a terminal multiplexer using perl and curses? Sure theoretically, but it is a lot of work in all all corners of the environment	[reply]