TerminalGuiDesigner 1.0.12

Terminal Gui Designer

Cross platform designer for Terminal.Gui applications.

Built with CodeDom and Roslyn, TerminalGuiDesigner lets you create complicated Views with drag and drop just like the WinForms designer you know and love (or hate).

Install the tool from NuGet or follow the Hello World Tutorial:

dotnet tool install --global TerminalGuiDesigner

Update to the latest version using

dotnet tool update --global TerminalGuiDesigner

This project is in alpha. See the feature list for progress.

Building

Build using the dotnet 6.0 sdk

cd src
dotnet run

Usage

Install the dotnet sdk and create a new console application with references to Terminal.Gui. Install the TerminalGuiDesigner and create a new dialog:

dotnet new console -n hello
cd hello
dotnet add package Terminal.Gui
dotnet tool install --global TerminalGuiDesigner
TerminalGuiDesigner MyDialog.cs

Enter a namespace then add a Button to the view. Save with Ctrl+S. Exit the designer with Ctrl+Q.

Enter the following into Program.cs

using Terminal.Gui;

Application.Init();

Application.Run(new YourNamespace.MyDialog());

Application.Shutdown();

Run your program with dotnet run

You can add new code to MyDialog.cs but avoid making any changes to MyDialog.Designer.cs as this will be rewritten when saving.

For example in MyDialog.cs after InitializeComponent() add the following:

button1.Clicked += ()=>MessageBox.Query("Hello","Hello World","Ok");

Now when run clicking the button will trigger a message box.

You can re-open the designer by running it from the command line with the file you want to edit/create.

TerminalGuiDesigner MyDialog.cs

You can remove the tool using the following:

dotnet tool uninstall --global TerminalGuiDesigner

Keybindings & Controls

You can change keybindings by copying Keys.yaml into your current directory.

To edit MenuBar items use the following controls

New root level menus can be added by right clicking the MenuBar and selecting 'Add Menu'.

Currently there is no support for custom field naming (i.e. (Name)) or assigning shortcuts to menu items but this is planned for the future.

Features

The following feature list shows the current capabilities and the roadmap

• Design classes
  • Window
  • Dialog
  • View
  • Top level (with statusbar and or menu)
• Configure root properties (e.g. Window.Width, Title etc)
• Configure subview properties
  • (Name)
  • X/Y
  • Width/Height
  • Text
  • Color Schemes
• Mouse Input
  • Drag to move
  • Drag into/out of sub view
  • Drag to resize
• Undo/Redo
• Direct editing of Text just by typing
• Easy Menu Bar Designing
  • Create new items
  • Move items
  • Move in/out of submenus
  • Add menu bar separators (Type '---')
  • Assign shortcuts
  • Set fieldnames (Name)
• Easy Status Bar Designing
• Create Events e.g. MyButton_OnClick
• Mutli select
  • Multi delete
  • Multi keyboard move
  • Multi mouse drag move
  • Multi set Property
  • Multi Copy/Paste
• Copy/Paste
  • Single simple views
  • Complex Views (TableView, MenuBar etc)
  • To OS clipboard (e.g. open one Designer.cs View and copy to another)
• Move views to subviews
  • With mouse
  • With keyboard
• Read and present xmldoc comments when editing properties
• Dev Environment Integration
  • Visual Studio plugin (e.g. right click a .Designer.cs to open in TerminalGuiDesigner console)
  • Visual Studio Code plugin
• Comprehensive Tests
• CI
• Create and edit views
  • Button
  • Checkbox
  • ComboBox
  • DateField
  • FrameView
  • GraphView
  • HexView
  • Label
  • LineView
  • ListView
  • MenuBar
  • PanelView
  • ProgressBar
  • RadioGroup
  • StatusBar
  • TableView
  • TabView
  • TextField
  • TextValidateField
  • TextView
  • TimeField
  • TreeView
  • View

Class Diagram