State of Notcurses 2020

[Nick Black]

This year has been shitty for most people, but we can't say it's
been too terrible for Notcurses. As of this time in 2019, 1.0.0
had not yet been released. @grendello's patch to accept
COLORTERM had just been merged "for better or worse". There was
no mouse support. There was no video support. There was no
alignment support. There were no man pages. `notcurses_refresh()`
had not yet been implemented. O(1) damage detection was a dream.
We were present in only one distro, Arch, and presence in the
AUR is sound and fury, signifying nothing.

1.0.0 was released 2020-01-04: https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses/releases/tag/v1.0.0

Much has changed. We're present in Debian, Fedora, Alpine, Arch,
Void, openSUSE, Ubuntu, and very soon NixOS. That's most of the
𒋀𒀕𒆠 (ur)-distributions; when their feeders next fork, we'll be
present. We're no longer adding desperately needed functionality,
but instead polishing and improving. Marek's C++ wrappers are
complete and stable. José Luis Cruz's Rust wrappers are a thing
of beauty. The mysterious igo95862 (Russian, maybe? I have no
idea) has annihilated my childish Python wrappers with a far
superior implementation. Our wrappers go into distros alongside
our core, meaning we're one of two TUI Rust libraries present in
Debian and Fedora. I sincerely believe that this discipline will
serve us well in the long term.

I couldn't be happier with how this effort has gone, nor prouder
of everyone who's contributed. You're all truly fantastic hax0rs,
and together we carry forward the banner of Free Hearts, Free
Minds, Free Software.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zNSgSzhBfM

I am deeply honored to lead this undeniably world-class gang,
and will live forever in your debt. It's paying dividends. Some
real-life feedback:

"This library just got me pregnant. Amazing."
"You are a mad genius. Hard to believe it's come this far in ten months."
"I'm looking to replace **RIVAL** with Notcurses in my project, as you
measure about 130% faster."
"I fell out of my chair watching this video. Very impressive."
"This library is what I've been looking for for years."
"I was working on my own library kinda like this, but you're so
much faster that I'm just going to use Notcurses now."

I have it on good word that Alpine might soon have a new
installer written using Notcurses. We spread; we multiply; we
adapt, overcome, and improvise; we infiltrate, we destroy, we
rebuild.

I am quite certain that Notcurses will achieve the goal I wrote
down last year: it will become *the* go-to TUI/CG library for
new applications. It is only a matter of time, and of mindshare.
You got in on the ground floor of a good thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVehcuJXe6I

This year, expect a FOSDEM talk, a possible CACM paper, and of
course my new bypass algorithm aka "Son of Painter":

https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses/issues/774

With #774's completion, no one will come close. I'm on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2wsx1onlOE

Hack on, motherfuckers. Happy 2021. Much danklove to you all.

--rigorously, nick

ps as a canonical Dumb American, it's really been a pleasure to
work with such an international team.

--
nick black -=- https://www.nick-black.com
to make an apple pie from scratch,
you need first invent a universe.

[Marek Habersack]

On Sun, 2020-12-20 at 17:22 -0500, Nick Black wrote:

> This year has been shitty for most people, but we can't say it's
> been too terrible for Notcurses. As of this time in 2019, 1.0.0
> had not yet been released. @grendello's patch to accept
> COLORTERM had just been merged "for better or worse". There was

It feels like yesterday... :) The night before I sent out that patch, I had been looking for a
library just like notcurses, ran across a few fine ones that delivered nice TUIs with full color
capabilities, but they were too high a level for what I wanted. Notcurses hit the spot nicely and
here we are, after a year of your incessant work and our contributions - Notcurses really rocks! :)

> no mouse support. There was no video support. There was no

[snip]

> I couldn't be happier with how this effort has gone, nor prouder
> of everyone who's contributed. You're all truly fantastic hax0rs,
> and together we carry forward the banner of Free Hearts, Free
> Minds, Free Software.

Working with you on Notcurses has really been like the fabled "old times" - this is open source the
way I like it, the way I feel the best with :)

>
>  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zNSgSzhBfM
>
> I am deeply honored to lead this undeniably world-class gang,
> and will live forever in your debt. It's paying dividends. Some
> real-life feedback:
>
>  "This library just got me pregnant. Amazing."

Was the baby named Notcurses? :)

>  "You are a mad genius. Hard to believe it's come this far in ten months."
>  "I'm looking to replace **RIVAL** with Notcurses in my project, as you
>   measure about 130% faster."
>  "I fell out of my chair watching this video. Very impressive."
>  "This library is what I've been looking for for years."
>  "I was working on my own library kinda like this, but you're so
>   much faster that I'm just going to use Notcurses now."
>
> I have it on good word that Alpine might soon have a new
> installer written using Notcurses. We spread; we multiply; we
> adapt, overcome, and improvise; we infiltrate, we destroy, we
> rebuild.

With hopefully a calmer 2021 I want to revisit my original reason for needing a library like
Notcurses - to build a true TUI toolkit (in C++, because I like my poison) and give a few app
favorites of mine a facelift... :)

> I am quite certain that Notcurses will achieve the goal I wrote
> down last year: it will become *the* go-to TUI/CG library for
> new applications. It is only a matter of time, and of mindshare.

I started a port to macOS, however it will require some changes to Notcurses core, I'll open a PR
one of these days. Once the port is done, we'll be available across the entire *nix universe :)

> You got in on the ground floor of a good thing.
>
>  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVehcuJXe6I
>
> This year, expect a FOSDEM talk, a possible CACM paper, and of
> course my new bypass algorithm aka "Son of Painter":
>
>  https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses/issues/774
>
> With #774's completion, no one will come close. I'm on it.
>
>  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2wsx1onlOE
>
> Hack on, motherfuckers. Happy 2021. Much danklove to you all.

Happy 2021!

thanks Nick and congrats :)

marek