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Jexer - Java Text User Interface library

This library implements a text-based windowing system loosely reminiscent of Borland's Turbo Vision system. It looks like this:

Terminal, Image, Table

Jexer works on both Xterm-like terminals and Swing, and supports images in both Xterm and Swing. On Swing, images are true color:

Swing Snake Image

On Xterm, images are dithered to a common palette:

Xterm Snake Image

License

Jexer is available to all under the MIT License. See the file LICENSE for the full license text.

Obtaining Jexer

Jexer is available on Maven Central:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.gitlab.klamonte</groupId>
  <artifactId>jexer</artifactId>
  <version>0.3.2</version>
</dependency>

Binary releases are available on SourceForge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/jexer/files/jexer/

The Jexer source code is hosted at: https://gitlab.com/klamonte/jexer

1.0.0 Release

Jexer's original list of features for its 1.0.0 release are undergoing final testing. Issues and merge requests are disabled until that release is out.

Documentation

Programming Examples

The examples/ folder currently contains:

jexer.demos contains official demos showing all of the existing UI controls. The demos can be run as follows:

  • 'java -jar jexer.jar' . This will use System.in/out with Xterm-like sequences on non-Windows non-Mac platforms. On Windows and Mac it will use a Swing JFrame.

  • 'java -Djexer.Swing=true -jar jexer.jar' . This will always use Swing on any platform.

  • 'java -cp jexer.jar jexer.demos.Demo2 PORT' (where PORT is a number to run the TCP daemon on). This will use the Xterm backend on a telnet server that will update with screen size changes.

  • 'java -cp jexer.jar jexer.demos.Demo3' . This will use System.in/out with Xterm-like sequences. One can see in the code how to pass a different InputReader and OutputReader to TApplication, permitting a different encoding than UTF-8.

  • 'java -cp jexer.jar jexer.demos.Demo4' . This demonstrates hidden windows and a custom TDesktop.

  • 'java -cp jexer.jar jexer.demos.Demo5' . This demonstrates two demo applications using different fonts in the same Swing frame.

  • 'java -cp jexer.jar jexer.demos.Demo6' . This demonstrates two applications performing I/O across three screens: an Xterm screen and Swing screen, monitored from a third Swing screen.

  • 'java -cp jexer.jar jexer.demos.Demo7' . This demonstrates the BoxLayoutManager, achieving a similar result as the javax.swing.BoxLayout apidocs example.

More Screenshots

Jexer can be run inside its own terminal window, with support for all of its features including images and mouse, and more terminals:

Yo Dawg...

Sixel output uses a single palette which works OK for a variety of real-world images:

Sixel Pictures Of Cliffs Of Moher And Buoy

The color wheel with that palette is shown below:

Sixel Color Wheel

Terminal Support

The table below lists terminals tested against Jexer's Xterm backend:

Terminal Environment Mouse Click Mouse Cursor Images
xterm X11 yes yes yes
jexer CLI, X11, Windows yes yes yes
mlterm X11 yes yes yes
RLogin Windows yes yes yes
alacritty(3) X11 yes yes no
gnome-terminal X11 yes yes no
iTerm2 Mac yes yes no(5)
kitty(3) X11 yes yes no
lcxterm(3) CLI, Linux console yes yes no
mintty Windows yes yes no(5)
rxvt-unicode X11 yes yes no(2)
xfce4-terminal X11 yes yes no
aminal(3) X11 yes no no
konsole X11 yes no no
yakuake X11 yes no no
Windows Terminal(6) Windows no no no(2)
screen CLI yes(1) yes(1) no(2)
tmux CLI yes(1) yes(1) no
putty X11, Windows yes no no(2)
Linux Linux console no no no(2)
qodem(3) CLI, Linux console yes yes(4) no
qodem-x11(3) X11 yes no no
yaft Linux console (FB) no no yes

1 - Requires mouse support from host terminal.

2 - Also fails to filter out sixel data, leaving garbage on screen.

3 - Latest in repository.

4 - Requires TERM=xterm-1003 before starting.

5 - Sixel images can crash terminal.

6 - Version 0.7.3291.0, on Windows 10.0.18362.30. Tested against WSL-1 Debian instance.

See Also

  • Tranquil Java IDE is a TUI-based integrated development environment for the Java language that was built using a very lightly modified GPL version of Jexer. TJ provided a real-world use case to shake out numerous bugs and limitations of Jexer.

  • LCXterm is a curses-based terminal emulator that allows one to use Jexer with full support on the raw Linux console.

  • ptypipe is a small C utility that permits a Jexer TTerminalWindow to resize the running shell when its window is resized.

Acknowledgements

Jexer makes use of the Terminus TrueType font made available here .