terminux

terminux is a small Go library for drawing and handling input in a terminal using ANSI escape codes.

It gives you:

• Raw keyboard input
• Double buffering (only changed cells are redrawn)
• Simple drawing helpers (points, rectangles, lines, etc.)

No dependencies beyond golang.org/x/term.

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Installation

go get github.com/mslaursen/terminux

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Render Loop

1. Create a screen
2. Put the terminal into raw mode
3. Run a loop that:
   • clears the back buffer
   • draws things
   • flushes the buffer to the terminal
4. Restore the terminal on exit

Input is handled asynchronously via an event listener.

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Minimal example

package main

import (
	"time"

	"github.com/mslaursen/terminux"
)

func main() {
	screen := terminux.NewScreenDefault()
	screen.HideCursor()
	defer screen.Restore()

	running := true

	screen.SetEventListener(func(event string) {
		if event == "q" {
			running = false
		}
	})

	go screen.ListenForEvents()

	ticker := time.NewTicker(time.Second / 30)
	defer ticker.Stop()

	for range ticker.C {
		if !running {
			break
		}

		screen.Clear()
		screen.Draw(10, 10, '@')
		screen.Display()
	}
}

Input

Input is read rune by rrune in raw mode.

screen.SetEventListener(func(event string) {
	fmt.Println(event)
})
go screen.ListenForEvents()

Each key press is passed to the listener as a string.

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Terminal state

terminux switches the terminal into raw mode. Always restore it before exiting:

defer screen.Restore()

This clears the screen, shows the cursor again, and resets terminal settings.

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