mod(structure): update project structure

Remove examples, add description for design goals in README.md and
apply re-names and naming changes accordingly for the project structure.
Implement a flat hierachry, as the library shall remain pretty simple.
This commit is contained in:
2025-01-30 23:02:34 +01:00
parent 3decc541a9
commit bdbe05c996
41 changed files with 204 additions and 3474 deletions

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@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
`zterm` is a terminal user interface library to implement terminal (fullscreen or inline) applications.
> [!NOTE]
> Only builds using the master version might will work.
> Only builds using the master version are tested to work.
## Usage
@@ -25,3 +25,46 @@ exe.root_module.addImport("zterm", zterm.module("zterm"));
```
For an example you can take a look at [build.zig](build.zig) for an example.
---
## Design Goals
This project draws heavy inspiration from
[clay](https://github.com/nicbarker/clay) in the way the layout is declared by
the user. As terminal applications usually are rendered in intermediate mode,
the rendering is also part of the event loop. Such that every time an event
happens a render call will usually be done as well. However this is not strickly
necessary and can be separated to have a fixed rendering of every 16ms (i.e. for
60 fps), etc.
There is only one generic container which contains properties and elements (or
children) which can also be containers, such that each layout in the end is
a tree.
The library is designed to be very basic and not to provide any more complex
elements such as input fields, drop-down menu's, buttons, etc. Some of them are
either easy to implement yourself, specific for you needs or a too complex to
be provided by the library effectively. For these use-cases there may be other
libraries that build on top of this one to provide the complex elements as some
sort of pre-built elements for you to use in your application (or you create
them yourself).
There are only very few system events, that are used by the built-in containers
and properties accordingly. For you own widgets (i.e. a collection of elements)
you can extend the events to include your own events to communicate between
elements, effect the control flow and the corresponding generated layouts and
much more.
As this is a terminal based layout library it also provides a rendering pipeline
alongside the event loop implementation. Usually the event loop is waiting
blocking and will only cause a re-draw (**intermediate mode**) after each event.
Even though the each frame is regenerated from scratch each render loop, the
corresponding application is still pretty performant as the renderer uses a
double buffered intermediate mode implementation to only apply the changes from
each frame to the next to the terminal.
This library is also designed to work accordingly in ssh hosted environments,
such that an application created using this library can be accessed directly
via ssh. This provides security through the ssh protocol and can defer the
synchronization process, as users may access the same running instance. Which is
the primary use-case for myself to create this library in the first place.