CKAN Console UI

A cross-platform text UI inspired by Borland's Turbo Vision and IBM's Common User Access circa 1990.

Technical summary

The core framework classes are in the ConsoleUI\Toolkit folder, while the application classes are in the ConsoleUI folder.

A UI in this framework consists of a ScreenContainer hosting one or more ScreenObjects. The container handles the overall logic of the display, while the objects implement specific UI elements. These are both abstract classes, so you have to use child classes like ConsoleScreen and ConsoleField.

Class hierarchy

Main UI classes:

ScreenObject
 |-- ConsoleButton
 |-- ConsoleField
 |-- ConsoleFrame
 |-- ConsoleLabel
 |-- ConsoleListBox<T>
 |-- ConsoleProgressBar
 \-- ConsoleTextBox
ScreenContainer
 |-- ConsoleScreen
 |    |-- KSPListScreen
 |    |-- KSPScreen
 |    |    |-- KSPAddScreen
 |    |    \-- KSPEditScreen
 |    |-- ProgressScreen
 |    |    \-- InstallScreen
 |    |-- DependencyScreen
 |    |-- ModListScreen
 |    \-- ModInfoScreen
 \-- ConsoleDialog
      |-- ConsoleMessageDialog
      |-- ConsoleChoiceDialog<T>
      \-- ModListHelpDialog
ConsolePopupMenu
ConsoleUI
ConsoleCKAN
SplashScreen

Resource classes:

Symbols
Keys
ConsoleTheme

Helper classes:

Formatting
ConsoleMenuOption
ScreenTip
ChangePlan
Dependency

Enums:

InstallStatus
TextAlign

IUser

The IUser interface is the main way that algorithms in Core interact with the user generically. They accept an IUser object as a parameter, and call methods on it to raise alerts or ask questions. In CmdLine, these calls are handled via simple Console.WriteLine statements, and in GUI various WinForms objects are created and displayed.

In ConsoleUI, ConsoleScreen is in charge of managing a whole screen, so it implements IUser and raises popup dialogs.

ProgressScreen handles the parts of IUser related to task completion, since these assume a visible progress bar.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to @HebaruSan's rl waifu for user testing.