Term::Visual is a "visual" terminal interface for curses applications. It provides the split-screen interface you may have seen in console based IRC and MUD clients.

Term::Visual's interface includes four regions. From top to bottom:

A title bar. Term::Visual supports many terminals, each with its own screen elements, and the title bar is a convenient way to remember which is currently active.

A large scrolling terminal region. In network clients, this is where remote output is shown. Many features are supported, the most notable are colorized text and scrollback.

A one- or two-line configurable status bar. Just about anything can be placed here, including the current time, and statistics about the runtime operation of whatever program you write with it.

A one-line entry bar, with many common editing keystrokes supported. It scrolls horizontally to allow more than just a screen's width of text.

Term::Visual uses the POE networking and multitasking framework to support concurrent input from network sockets and the console, multiple timers, and more.

Term::Visual is a "visual" terminal because it is display rather than line oriented. It takes up the full screen, provides scrollback features, and allows you to edit input in what is essentially a one-line text editor. Similar features make vi the "visual" text editor, and are elements of TinyFugue's "visual" mode.

• http://www.egr.msu.edu/decs/facilities/software/vi.php#Whatis
• http://www.muq.org/~hawkeye/tf/help/topics/mode.html

The tarball currently has no tests, but there are sample programs in the examples directory.

Term::Visual installs the usual way:

perl Makefile.PL
make
make install

The project is managed at SourceForge. Various support resources are available there. Please see http://sourceforge.net/projects/visterm/ for more information.

-- Charles Ayres - lunartear@ambientheory.com -- Rocco Caputo - troc@pobox.com - http://poe.perl.org/