Hacking the Planet (with Notcurses): A Guide to TUIs and Character Graphics

by Nick Black

Nick Black, prolific Free Software developer and designer of Notcurses, introduces character graphics and Text User Interface design. The examples use the modern Notcurses library, but many of the lessons are applicable to TUI programming using NCURSES or Newt. Topics include the history of and current practice of terminals, Unicode (through 2020's Unicode 13.0), handling input from keyboards and mice, effective use of RGB DirectColor, palette-indexed pseudocolor, and alpha blending, loading images and video, construction of reusable TUI widgets, and more. These concepts are developed using rich examples. Nick graduated with a handful of degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and has hacked away in the code mines of NVIDIA, Google, and several successful startups. He is a Senior Member of the ACM, and a consulting scientist at Dirty South Supercomputing and Waffles.

161 pages, Paperback

Published April 2, 2020

About the author

An outpost of literacy from the southeast, putting Atlanta on the Goodreads map.

I dig exposure to a broad swath of new material, and add pretty much anyone who seems interesting. What's in it for you? Prolixness? Old-school Southern charm? More blindingly-obscure scientific esoterica puked into your mailbox than you can shake a pointed stick at? Irregular bursts of punchy reviews by the dozen, marked by general irreverence and oft-breathtaking ignorance? Yes, Faithful Reader, all this and more can be had within.

I am lettered in Latin of the rhetorical era, and can fumble my way through Ancient Greek; I also try to mangle some Spanish, German and Russian whenever I can. Expect the abuse of UTF-8.

I'm a senior systems engineer at Google NYC following work at Georgia Tech's College of Computing (focusing on high-performance computing architectures, automata theory, compiler design, and the foundations of computing) with side interests in the School of Nuclear Engineering (toroidal hydromagnetic and inertial confinement fusion, stockpile stewardship and fourth-generation reactors). I lived in Atlanta most of my life, and intend to run for mayor there one day. Resurgens!

Reviews

[Nick Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

the author clearly knows what he's talking about, but too readily dives into unnecessary esoterica. also, the book could have been longer -- at $35, i'm paying nearly $0.20 per (admittedly full-color) page, and the coverage of multimedia and gradient systems is not as complete as it could have been. with that said, it fills a definite hole in the literature, and the notcurses system seems a bold improvement over character graphics that have come before it.

(full disclosure: i am the author)

[Blux · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun read where Notcurses API documentation is combined with a lot of interesting tidbits on the history of terminals in general. Made me laugh out loud several times; something that never happens when reading technical stuff, usually it is the exact opposite.

I look forward to replacing Ncurses with Notcurses in my never to be finished hobby projects.

[Ash · Rating 1 out of 5]

this is a terrible waste of time because the explanations are confusing and the writing is terrible. the author has a lot of jealousy issues with talent that he is not able to understand. waste of time. don't go there.