Terminaux 8.2 is now available!

We have earlier announced the release schedule for long-term support versions of Terminaux, and this step was taken to ensure that new features arrive slowly to build the next-generation versions more reliably.

As part of the plan to support long-term releases of Terminaux for five years, we’ve released Terminaux 8.2, which is a small feature release that provides you several features to make it easier for you to build Terminaux applications.

• QR Code Writer: Terminaux now provides you with a simple console writer that prints a QR code for you to scan with your phone or any other QR code scanner.
• Micro QR Code Writer: Terminaux also provides a renderer that prints a Micro QR code for very small strings, though scanning them is less common.

This version of Terminaux also finishes the migration of the color tools to Colorimetry, which has become a separate library as we wanted to expand this functionality to more than just console applications. GUI apps, web apps, mobile apps, and other apps can now use Terminaux’s powerful color system using Colorimetry.

Terminaux 8.2 is coming soon

We have earlier announced the release schedule for long-term support versions of Terminaux, and this step was taken to ensure that new features arrive slowly to build the next-generation versions more reliably.

Terminaux 8.2 is a small feature release that will provide you several features to make it easier for you to build Terminaux applications. This version will add the following features:

• QR Code Writer: Terminaux now provides you with a simple console writer that prints a QR code for you to scan with your phone or any other QR code scanner.
• Micro QR Code Writer: Terminaux also provides a renderer that prints a Micro QR code for very small strings, though scanning them is less common.

This version of Terminaux also finishes the migration of the color tools to Colorimetry, which has become a separate library as we wanted to expand this functionality to more than just console applications. GUI apps, web apps, mobile apps, and other apps can now use Terminaux’s powerful color system using Colorimetry.

For developers, the new Aptivi Development Toolkit (ADT) is used instead of the older shell-based scripts. This aligns with our plan for rolling it out to the remaining projects in the coming days.

Terminaux 8.2 will be released later this March, and Nitrocid will be updated accordingly, before the beginning of April.

Terminaux 8.1 is globally available!

Terminaux 8.0 was released last October to provide long term support releases for the first time in the lifetime of this library since the first version was released on August 2023. Since then, we have added more improvements and new features on top of this version to make it stronger!

Now, we are so excited to release this version of Terminaux, which is version 8.1! This version provides mouse improvements that were made in the selection-related TUIs and prompts, such as the selection infobox and the choice selector TUI. By binding double clicks for all items to act like the Enter key, you can now use your mouse to select a choice and perform the action based on it.

Terminaux 8.1 also provides more improvements, such as the preparation of the Color class for movement to Colorimetry library, which is already done there. The complete movement will be done in the next Terminaux 8.x release expected to release on March 19th. Also, we’ve done the migration of the calendar-related code to Calendrier, which is a bold move as we clean things up from old residual code that may not have received bug fixes.

This version also provides screen overlays, making a rather laborious task of having to maintain screen overlays easier by providing two types of overlays: global overlays, which get rendered regardless of the screen, and screen-specific overlays, which get rendered depending on the screen used. This is useful for gauges and other overlaid display. Also, we’ve have synchronized the list of terminal emulators and their Terminfo specifications with NCurses 6.6.

The upgrade path from 8.0 to 8.1 requires that you follow the list of breaking changes made in the GitBook documentation.

Terminaux 8.1 is now available for free on NuGet!

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Introducing monthly Terminaux LTS point releases

Since Terminaux 8.0, we have introduced long term support releases to the library as it matured in just two years. Since then, we have established a policy that said that every odd-numbered version means a single-year support window, and that every even-numbered version means five years of support. As we froze the code for the upcoming Terminaux release, we’ve decided to announce the big change for the long-term support versions of Terminaux!

Starting from January 22nd, Terminaux 8.1 will mark its first point release for the first long-term release version of Terminaux! Therefore, we’re announcing a new method to update long-term support releases while introducing a small pool of features.

The policy is as follows:

The release cadence of every long term support version will be a monthly update, with new point releases being made in either the second week or the third week of every month until the fourth year of support. During the fourth year, we’ll use one remaining year to integrate bug fixes that will be introduced in future major releases, with no new point releases introduced. For example, if Terminaux 8.x has only one year left until EOL, we’ll use this period to introduce versions 9.0 and 10.0 during the first 6 months. A new LTS release will not have its first point release until after the year in which we’ve released the new LTS release ends. However, major events like Nitrocid’s major releases may cause a Terminaux version to get skipped to the next month.

To provide more clarity to the policy, this figure describes the process more clearly.

This ensures that we provide small amounts of new features while integrating lots of bug fixes and improvements to existing features. However, please note that breaking changes may or may not exist in future minor versions in the LTS release series. For example, Terminaux 8.1 provides Nitrocid-specific optimizations that break the API, while Terminaux 8.2 might not introduce breaking changes. However, for STS releases, there will be always one release, which is x.0. For example, there won’t be v7.1 or v9.1 due to the release policy. In case a release gets skipped, the version will be incremented once, not twice, to follow the versioning standards.

Here’s the clarification of our plan for both v8.0 and v10.0 releases. Please note that dates are tentative and are subject to changes and exceptions, and some releases may be skipped, depending on the nature of the release and the planned features.

Terminaux 8.1 will be released on January 22nd!

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Mouse improvements in Terminaux 8.1

Since Terminaux 4.0, mouse support was added to make C# console applications more interactive. This was done by abstracting the implementations of both the Windows API for detecting mouse clicks in the terminal using the combination of PeekConsoleInput() and MOUSE_INPUT_RECORD, and the Linux method for mouse clicks using the SGR/X10 VT sequences that we have to parse ourselves. The end result is a single function that handles mouse and keyboard input on a ReadPointerOrKey() function, further branched to a non-blocking version.

As a result, we’ve integrated mouse support to all kinds of interactive user interfaces within Terminaux, which resulted in both the library and Nitrocid handling all mouse input, as well as Terminaux programs having mouse support built-in without re-implementing support. However, there was room for improvements when it comes to the selection-based user interfaces.

Terminaux 8.1, which will be released two weeks from now, will feature improvements to mouse support when it comes to the choice selection style TUIs, as well as the interactive selector TUIs. Starting from this version:

• In the selector TUI, double-clicking on an item in either the first pane or the second pane will trigger the “submit” action, which, by default, is defined to an action bound to the Enter key. For example, in Nitrocid 0.2.0, if you double-click on an SMultivar settings entry in the second pane, the child settings entries underneath this entry will be revealed.
• In both the selection style and the infobox selection input TUIs, double-clicking on an item in the list of choices will confirm the selection. This allows you to confirm your selection without accidentally selecting a wrong item, since those TUIs always show a list of choices.

This is a behavioral change to the three affected Terminaux input components, which will land to Nitrocid 0.2.0 and 0.1.0 Service Pack 6 next month.

Photo by Rainer Eli on Unsplash

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Terminaux Long-Term Support announcement

As we have just released Terminaux 8.0, we have decided to finalize the support period for this version of the library. We have made this decision as Nitrocid 0.2.0 becomes under development, which is also planned to be a long-term support release that will be for ten years. This is necessary to ensure that we maintain high security standards during the long lifecycle.

Terminaux 8.0 is now supported for five years instead of just one year to allow more time for security and bug fixes, while also making room for improvements that will be made to Terminaux applications.

The release support pattern has become:

• Major Terminaux versions that are odd-numbered, such as v7.x or v9.x, will only have a single year of support, and those versions will introduce more features.
• Major Terminaux versions that are even-numbered, such as v8.x or v10.x, will have five years of support, as we promised, but they will only introduce fewer features.

This is important for Terminaux applications that are used in enterprise environments to allow time for enterprises to migrate their applications, should we release an LTS release of the library.

This does not set a definite release rhythm for when the first version of a new version series releases, unlike projects that have a clear release rhythm, but we will introduce new and promising versions to you as we monitor user feedback and internal plans.

Terminaux 8.0 will be supported for five years until October 13th, 2030!

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Terminaux 8.0 is now available!

After the release of the most exciting Terminaux 7.0, we are continuing the journey of performance and productivity by releasing Terminaux 8.0 to build on top of the preceding version. We have done further refinements in this version to upgrade your terminal applications to a whole new level.

With new features being in place, we have taken a step further and introduced some more features that are taken from Nitrocid, such as audio cues for each keypress. This extends the feature from being exclusive to the terminal reader to being globally available across all areas of console applications. Not only that, but you can also customize the audio cues to play any sound you like using file streams. Introduced with Nitrocid, we have extended audio feedback to all areas of Terminaux applications, such as interactive TUIs.

To hide some commands that are worth hiding, such as hidden features and easter eggs, we have decided to add support for hidden commands through a command flag to make it easier for you to hide a command. This way, we have used it to introduce a plethora of commands that are related to strings, numbers, and other commands that are useful for scripting. You can show them using the -hidden switch when executing the help command.

To speed up documentation, we have decided to add a new switch that allows you to export a list of commands to Markdown tables. This will print the output to the console, which you can copy and paste to your favorite markdown editor or any other editor that supports Markdown, such as VS Code. This will make life easier for the documentation team for your application.

We are aware of the importance of redirecting Terminaux application’s output to a file or to a pipe. To achieve this goal, we have decided to remove the whole console checker feature that was there in Nitrocid. This will open new possibilities for applications that use Terminaux, especially the CLI. Please note that Terminaux applications using graphical renderers and other rich output, such as animated text, will not work properly in redirections.

You can upgrade Terminaux applications to use the eighth major version today, and for free!

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