1notcurses-demo(1) notcurses-demo(1)
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6 notcurses-demo - Show off some Notcurses features
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9 notcurses-demo [-h|--help] [-p path] [-d delaymult] [-l loglevel] [-J
10 jsonfile] [-m margins] [-V|--version] [-kc] demospec
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13 notcurses-demo demonstrates the capabilities of the Notcurses library.
14 It can be run in any terminal emulator or console with a correct ter‐
15 minfo(5) database, but is at is best in a 24bpp TrueColor RGB environ‐
16 ment. If notcurses-demo seems to generate garbage, something is likely
17 configured in a way that is going to prevent Notcurses from working in
18 other applications.
19 The demonstrations include (see NOTES below):
21 • (a)nimate—explore cycles within Unicode
23 • (b)oxes—pulsating boxes with a transparent center
25 • (c)hunli—the strongest woman in the world
27 • (d)ragon—the Harter-Heighway dragon curve
29 • (e)agle—they took some time off my life, back in the day
31 • (f)ission—the screen falls apart under heavy blows
33 • (g)rid—a gradient of color lain atop a great grid
35 • (h)ighcon—high contrast text atop various colors
37 • (i)ntro—a setting of tone
39 • (j)ungle—low-bandwidth color cycling reveals ancient ruins
41 • (k)eller—the miracle of sight, and painting with Braille
43 • (l)uigi—a dashing Apennine plumber in a world of fire
45 • (m)ojibake—today's fresh catch of emoji (market price)
47 • (n)ormal—a normal map of a friend, with effects
49 • (o)utro—a message of hope from the library's author
51 • (q)rcode—quick response codes (from ISO/IEC 18004:2015)
53 • (r)eel—demonstration of the ncreel high-level widget
55 • (s)liders—a missing-piece puzzle made up of colorful blocks
57 • (t)rans—an exploration of various transparencies
59 • (u)niblocks—a series of blocks detailing Unicode pages
61 • (v)iew—images and a video are rendered as text
63 • (w)hiteout—a great Nothing slowly robs the world of color
65 • (x)ray—stimulate a logo with energy
67 • (y)ield—the best laid schemes o' mice an'men gang aft agley
69 • (z)oo—see the marvelous widgets of the Notcurses world
71 At any time, press 'q' to quit. The demo is best run in at least an
73 80x45 terminal, and will refuse to run in anything smaller than 80x24.
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76 -p path: Look in the specified path for data files.
77 -d delaymult: Apply a non-negative rational multiplier to the standard
79 delay of 1s.
80 -l loglevel: Log between everything (loglevel 7) and nothing (loglevel
82 0) to stderr.
83 -f renderfile: Render each frame to renderfile in addition to the
85 screen.
86 -J jsonfile: Emit JSON summary of run to jsonfile.
88 -m margins: Define rendering margins (see below).
90 -k: Inhibit use of the alternate screen. Necessary if you want the
92 output left on your terminal after the program exits.
93 -c: Do not attempt to seed the PRNG. This is useful when benchmarking.
95 -h|--help: Print a usage message, and exit with success.
97 -V|--version: Print the program name and version, and exit with suc‐
99 cess.
100 demospec: Select which demos to run, and what order to run them in.
102 The default is ixetunchdmbkywjgarvlsfqzo. See above for a list of
103 demos.
104 Default margins are all 0, and thus the full screen will be rendered.
106 Using -m, margins can be supplied. Provide a single number to set all
107 four margins to the same value, or four comma-delimited values for the
108 top, right, bottom, and left margins respectively. Negative margins
109 are illegal.
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112 Proper display requires:
113 • A terminal advertising the rgb [22mterminfo(5) capability, or that the
115 environment variable COLORTERM is defined to 24bit (and that the ter‐
116 minal honors RGB escapes),
117 • A monospaced font, and
119 • Good Unicode support in your libc, font, and terminal emulator.
121 The Debian version of notcurses-demo leaves out certain multimedia con‐
123 sidered non-free under the Debian Free Software Guidelines. As a re‐
124 sult, the chunli, eagle, jungle, keller, luigi, and view demos are un‐
125 available through the Debian package. This applies to any distro which
126 uses the DFSG source tarball, including Ubuntu and Fedora.
127 If Notcurses is built without multimedia support, the chunli, eagle,
129 keller, outro, view, xray, and yield demos will be partially or wholly
130 unavailable. If Notcurses is built without libqrcodegen, the qrcode
131 demo will be unavailable.
132 If notcurses-demo is run in a terminal lacking the can_change terminfo
134 capability, the jungle demo will be skipped.
135 The following keypresses are recognized (and are also available from
137 the menu):
138 • Ctrl-U: Toggle the help screen.
140 • H: Toggle the HUD. The HUD shows the most recent and current demos'
142 runtime and number of rendered frames. It can be grabbed and moved
143 with the mouse.
144 • P: Toggle the FPS graph.
146 • Ctrl-R: Restart the demo.
148 • Ctrl-L: Redraw the screen.
150 • Alt-d: Toggle a window with debugging information.
152 • q: Quit.
154 Benchmarking should be performed using -c to get a well-defined PRNG
156 seed. JSON output via -J will probably be useful.
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159 Certain demos (especially mojibake and uniblocks) heavily exercise the
160 font rendering stack. If your font or rendering engine draws glyphs
161 with width different from that reported by the standard library's
162 wcwidth(3), Notcurses will have an incorrect notion of cursor place‐
163 ment, leading to undesirable behavior.
164
166 • All code and design copyright Nick Black <nickblack@linux.com>.
167 • Images from Street Fighter II and Mega Man 2 copyright Capcom of
169 America.
170 • Images from Super Mario Bros. copyright Nintendo of America.
172 • Images from Ninja Gaiden copyright Koei Tecmo America.
174 • Images from Final Fantasy copyright Square Enix Co Ltd.
176 • Images from Back to the Future copyright Universal Studios and U-
178 Drive Joint Venture.
179 • "Jungle with Rain" copyright Mark Ferrari/Living Worlds.
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183 notcurses(3), ncurses(3NCURSES), wcwidth(3), terminfo(5)
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186 nick black <nickblack@linux.com>.
187 v3.0.8 notcurses-demo(1)