Terminal¶

A Terminal is a presentation host: it owns a live or offscreen session, paints frames, and dispatches keyboard, mouse, and tick events into your grids' @on_* hooks.

Grids do not open a session by themselves. Pass content to Terminal (or to render for a one-shot frame).

One frame¶

render paints once and returns control. It does not run the event loop.

from xnano import render

render("hello, terminal!", foreground="blue")

from xnano import render

render("hello, terminal!", foreground="blue") # (1)!

1. Opens a short-lived paint path, writes the frame, then stops.

A live session¶

Terminal().run(...) keeps painting and dispatching until exit.

from xnano import Terminal

terminal = Terminal()
terminal.run("hello, terminal!") # (1)!

1. Unlike render(), .run() stays open until the app exits.

Terminal also has .render(...) for a single frame on that host (returns a Frame).

Running a grid¶

Pass a BaseGrid as the root. Fields become regions of the screen; hooks on the grid receive events.

from xnano import BaseGrid, Field, Terminal

class App(BaseGrid, direction="vertical"):
    title: str = Field(default="My App", border="rounded")
    name: str = Field(default="Hammad", state=True)

terminal = Terminal()
terminal.run(App()) # (1)!

1. Layout and field details are covered under Grids and Fields.

Runnable Example¶

from xnano import BaseGrid, Field, render

class App(BaseGrid, direction="vertical"):
    title: str = Field(default="My App", border="rounded")
    body: str = Field(default="Hello")

# As Terminal.render() requires a live terminal session, we cannot use it
# here in the browser directly.
render(App())

State and mouse¶

Application-wide state is attached at construction and available on every hook as ctx.state (see Context):

Terminal(state=AppState()).run(App())

Mouse input is off by default. Enable it when you need click-to-focus, @on_click, or @on_mouse:

Terminal(state=AppState(), mouse_events=True).run(App())

Constructor options include state=, title=, tick_interval=, and mouse_events=. Exit a running loop with terminal.request_exit() or ctx.runtime.request_exit() from a hook.

Terminal does not serve HTTP. Browser hosting is Web. Request handlers are Requests.

Under the hood, Terminal owns a Runtime (terminal.runtime). Prefer Terminal in apps; use Runtime when you need explicit session ownership. Frame is the immutable snapshot returned by .render(...).

Next¶

• Grids — what gets laid out
• Events & Hooks — keyboard, tick, and the rest
• Device & Cursor — title, clipboard, caret
• Markdown / Effects