Clingon (Command Line INterface for GO Nuts) is a Go library that helps in creating command-line interfaces à la Quake. Can't wait to see how does it look? Watch this video (early version) and see if it is worth reading below.
Clingon exploits a parallel and (hopefully) clean design. Basically, there are four parts running in parallel:
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The console: it runs (almost) in the same goroutine of the client-code and it exposes console functionalities to it. The client modifies the console state through a simple API. When a new console instance is created, a goroutine is spawned. This goroutine simply triggers the "blink cursor" event to the renderer at regular time's interval.
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The renderer: it responds to the events triggered by the console in order to render a graphical representation of the console state. A renderer object should implement the Renderer interface.
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The animation service: it provides a stream of changing values used for animations. For example, this service provides the changing Y coordinate as a function of time in order to achieve the console sliding effect.
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The evaluator: it evaluates the commands sent to the console providing back a result. It implements the Evaluator interface.
Because of its design, clingon could be a neat choice for adding console functionalities to games and graphical applications. For example, it is used in gospeccy to provide a non-blocking CLI which runs in parallel with the emulator.
Moreover, the fact that console operations are isolated from the rendering backend allows for non-blocking graphical effects.
Clingon tries to emulate a part of readline functionalities for line editing. At the moment, only a very small subset of the whole readline commands are available. However, clingon will never offer a complete readline emulation as it's simply not needed in games. See the Features section for more details.
Clingon is completely renderer-agnostic. Currently, only an SDL renderer is being shipped with the package but it should not be difficult to add more backends (e.g. opengl, draw/x11, etc.)
- Concurrent design
- Graphical backend agnostic (currently an SDL renderer is included)
- Console scrolling
- Readline-like commands
- left/right cursor movements
- up/down history browsing
go get -v github.com/remogatto/clingon
After installing the package try the sample code in example/ folder:
cd $GOPATH/github.com/remogatto/clingon/example
make run
- Improve readline emulation by adding more commands
- Add new rendering backends
- Add more graphical effects
- Experimenting with clingon + exp/eval + draw2d
Thanks to the following people for the contribute they give to this project:
Copyright (c) 2010 Andrea Fazzi
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