Introduction to the Owl Project
Owl is a cutting-edge toolkit designed for developing command-line user interfaces using Elixir, making text-based interactions and displays not only functional but also visually appealing. The core idea behind Owl is to simplify and enhance terminal applications with a variety of features that bring color and interactivity to the command line.
Key Features
Owl offers a multitude of capabilities to enrich the command-line interface experience:
-
Text Colorization: Users can easily add color to text using tags, making terminal outputs more vibrant and distinguishable.
-
User Input Control: It provides robust input control with validations and the ability to cast inputs into different data types, ensuring that the data entered is both valid and ready for further processing.
-
Selection Controls: Inspired by AUR package managers, Owl includes select and multiselect controls, allowing users to make choices from lists with ease.
-
Table Displays: Developers can create and display structured data in a tabular format, enhancing readability and organization.
-
Text Editing: By integrating with
ELIXIR_EDITOR, Owl allows text editing directly from the command line. -
ASCII Box Wrapping: Multi-line, colorized text can be encapsulated in ASCII boxes, adding a neat and structured look to outputs.
-
Palette Colors and Progress Indicators: Users can print a range of palette colors, and include progress bars and spinners to visually indicate tasks' progress. Owl supports multiple progress indicators running simultaneously.
-
Live Updates: Multi-line blocks can be live-updated, offering real-time changes and enhancements to information displayed on the terminal.
-
Virtual Device Compatibility: Owl works with a virtual device that partially implements the Erlang I/O Protocol, ensuring seamless integration with live blocks without conflicts.
Demo and Resources
To see Owl in action, there's an asciinema demo that showcases its capabilities. For those interested in exploring the project further, examples and detailed code are available in the examples directory of the project's GitHub repository.
Installation Guide
To incorporate Owl into your Elixir projects, you can install it by updating the dependencies list in your mix.exs file as follows:
def deps do
[
{:owl, "~> 0.12"},
# For multibyte character support (e.g., emoji), uncomment the optional dependency below:
# {:ucwidth, "~> 0.2"}
]
end
Documentation
Comprehensive documentation is available at HexDocs, providing users with all the necessary information to make the most of Owl's features.
In conclusion, Owl stands out as an exceptional tool for developers looking to create dynamic and visually engaging command-line interfaces using Elixir. Its range of features and ease of integration make it a valuable asset in the realm of terminal application development.