The Text Widget

The text widget renders styled text in the terminal. It's a fundamental building block for displaying formatted content with colors, modifiers, and multiple lines. Text is built from Line objects, which are in turn composed of Span objects.

APIs

mod text: sig {
    type Alignment = [`Left, `Center, `Right];
    type Modifier = [
        `Bold,
        `Italic,
        `Underlined,
        `SlowBlink,
        `RapidBlink,
        `Reversed,
        `Hidden,
        `CrossedOut
    ];
    type Color = [
        `Red, `Green, `Yellow, `Blue, `Magenta, `Cyan, `Gray, `DarkGray,
        `LightRed, `LightGreen, `LightYellow, `LightBlue, `LightMagenta, `LightCyan,
        `White, `Black,
        `Indexed(i64),
        `Rgb({r: i64, g: i64, b: i64})
    ];

    /// Creates styled text from a string or array of lines
    val text: fn(&[string, Array<Line>]) -> Widget;

    /// Creates a line of text from a string or array of spans
    val line: fn(?#style: Style, ?#alignment: Alignment, [string, Array<Span>]) -> Line;

    /// Creates a styled text span
    val span: fn(?#style: Style, string) -> Span;

    /// Creates a text style
    val style: fn(?#fg: Color, ?#bg: Color, ?#add_modifier: Modifier) -> Style;
}

Text Hierarchy

• Span: A single segment of text with a single style
• Line: A collection of spans forming one line
• Text: A collection of lines forming multi-line content

Examples

Basic Usage

use tui;
use tui::text;

text(&"Hello, World!")

Status Messages

use tui;
use tui::text;

let make_status = |level, msg| select level {
    `Error => line([
        span(#style: style(#fg: `Red, #add_modifier: [`Bold]), "ERROR: "),
        span(msg)
    ]),
    `Warning => line([
        span(#style: style(#fg: `Yellow, #add_modifier: [`Bold]), "WARNING: "),
        span(msg)
    ]),
    `Info => line([
        span(#style: style(#fg: `Cyan), "INFO: "),
        span(msg)
    ])
};

text(&[
    make_status(`Info, "Application started"),
    make_status(`Warning, "Cache miss"),
    make_status(`Error, "Connection failed")
])

Dynamic Colors

use tui;
use tui::text;

let count = 0;
let timer = time::timer(duration:1.s, true);
count <- timer ~ (count + 1);

let colors = [`Red, `Green, `Yellow, `Blue, `Magenta, `Cyan];
let color = colors[count % array::len(colors)]$;

let l = line([
    span(#style: style(#fg: `White), "Count: "),
    span(#style: style(#fg: color, #add_modifier: [`Bold]), "[count]")
]);

text(&[l])

Alignment

use tui;
use tui::text;

text(&[
    line(#alignment: `Left, "Left aligned"),
    line(#alignment: `Center, "Centered"),
    line(#alignment: `Right, "Right aligned")
])

Color Support

• Named colors: Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Magenta, Cyan, White, Black, Gray, DarkGray, and Light* variants
• Indexed colors: Indexed(202) for 256-color palette
• RGB colors: Rgb({r: 255, g: 100, b: 50}) for true color

Text Modifiers

• Bold, Italic, Underlined, CrossedOut
• SlowBlink, RapidBlink (terminal support varies)
• Reversed, Hidden

See Also

• paragraph - For wrapped and scrollable text
• block - For containing text with borders
• list - For selectable text items