Alternative frameworks #10
Description
Found out about a parallel project to yours, here: https://parall.ax/blog/view/3131/vtop-revisiting-the-activity-monitor
Quote:
I decided to write vtop using Node.js. It’s built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine and allows you to write fast and scalable applications. This choice could pave the way for a web-based frontend to be added in the future. JavaScript is coming into it’s own – it’s no longer the scrappy, badly implemented language that everyone used to make sparkles follow your cursor on your Geocities page. Node.js has evolved the language – it’s now a a fully formed toolchain with a thriving community. There’s a Node package for just about anything you can think of, you can really hit the ground running by picking up other people’s modules instead of writing from scratch.
At the beginning of the rewrite, I made an outline using simple box drawing characters that I used to love playing with in my early DOS programming days. While this worked ok, I felt there might be an easier way. I’d seen ncurses and wondered if there was anything more modern kicking about. I eventually came across Blessed.
Blessed abstracts away the complexities of drawing a GUI in the terminal. You tell it where to draw boxes, and they are automatically resized based on the terminal width and height. You can also listen to scroll wheel and click events to enable even easier interaction. I’d highly recommend you check it out.