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Cursorial

A cross-platform .NET library for building visually rich terminal applications with first-class mouse and keyboard support. Cursorial is library-first — a layered stack you consume as much (or as little) of as you need, from raw input handling all the way up to a declarative, data-bound UI framework with XAML.

This wiki is the in-depth documentation. For the quick tour, see the README.

Start here

• Getting started — install Cursorial.Core, open a session, render a frame, read input.
• Architecture & the layered stack — how the layers compose and which one you actually need.

The stack

Each layer builds on the one below and is usable on its own.

Cursorial.Core — the foundation (published)

• Input — keyboard, mouse, focus, paste, resize; pull & push delivery; transforms.
• Capability negotiation — terminal-family detection and protocol opt-in.
• Output writers, style & color — SGR/cursor/screen writers, Style, Color, quantization.
• Text utilities — grapheme widths and ANSI-aware word wrapping.

Cursorial.Rendering — drawing to a cell buffer

• Cell buffer & frame renderer — diffing renderer, views, blending.
• Rich text, images & sized text — markup, Image/Icon, ScaledText.

Cursorial.Drawing & Cursorial.Animation

• Drawing: scenes, brushes & charts — cached-raster scenes, the compositor.
• Animation — the time-free IAnimation<T> engine.

Cursorial.UI — the UI framework

• Overview — UIApplication, the property system, the element tree, the frame loop.
• Layout & panels — measure/arrange and the panels.
• Controls — the control catalog.
• Styling & themes — selectors, pseudo-classes, resources, theme variants.
• Data binding — {Binding}, converters, modes, compiled bindings.
• Input, focus & commands — routed events, focus, gestures, access keys.
• Windowing — windows, dialogs, light-dismiss popups, shadows.
• Animation & transitions — storyboards and implicit transitions.

Command & data surfaces

• Command surfaces (Cursorial.UI.Bars) — the Ribbon, Toolbar, and menus over one shared BarCommand set.
• Data views (Cursorial.UI.DataViews) — a DevExpress-style DataGrid over a UI-free shaping engine.
• Dialogs (Cursorial.UI.Dialogs) — the TaskDialog suite (command links, verification, progress).

Cursorial.UI.Xaml — declarative markup

• XAML: runtime loader & source generator — markup, templates, compiled bindings, AOT-clean codegen.

Status

Every layer is published on NuGet. Cursorial.Core is approaching stable; the layers above it are pre-release — usable today (the Cursorial.Demo REPL and the Cursorial.Gallery app drive them end-to-end), but their public surfaces are still settling, so expect breaking changes.

License

Apache License 2.0.