4 ms·

Show HN: RatatuiRuby wraps Rust Ratatui as a RubyGem – TUIs with the joy of Ruby

152 points by Kerrick 9mo ago

aaronbrethorst 9mo ago
super cool, great work Kerrick!
- Kerrick 9mo ago
  Thank you! My first Show HN in 2012 [0] was an inline TUI (of sorts) written in Ruby [1], so this is a great day. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4017933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4017933 [1]: https://kerrick.github.io/google/ https://kerrick.github.io/google/
knowitnone3 9mo ago
This is awesome, will definitely take this for a spin!
- Kerrick 9mo ago
  Thank you! Please let me know how you find it. I want to make sure the DX is as good as possible.
rubyfan 9mo ago
Looks really interesting, I’m excited to explore this.
cswilliams 9mo ago
Excited to try it out as well. I often need to build simple CLI based apps in ruby so often would reach for TTY Toolkit: https://ttytoolkit.org/ https://ttytoolkit.org/ However, I feel like it's in maintenance mode at this point, so glad to see some new options available.
- 3eb7988a1663 9mo ago
  Shouldn't some software be allowed to be done? Maintenance mode on a TUI library seems a reasonable place to be.
  - cswilliams 9mo ago
    Sure. I was probably trying to be too polite and didn't want to use the word "abandoned", but that's probably a better term for the library at this point. There's a good amount of open issues and PRs in many of the component gems that haven't been addressed in years and requests to help maintain it have gone unanswered[0]. [0] https://github.com/piotrmurach/tty-prompt/issues/210 https://github.com/piotrmurach/tty-prompt/issues/210
    - 3eb7988a1663 9mo ago
      Ah yes, quite a different kettle of fish.
  - an0malous 9mo ago
    sure it’s a good TUI library, but is it agentic?
desireco42 9mo ago
I can't like this enough, Ruby is perfect language for TUI apps and emergence of TUI apps is really welcome change.
rbitar 9mo ago
Fantastic, this looks excellent and excited to try it
xfalcox 9mo ago
I just made a new installer for Discourse on CharmRuby, now I gotta check this out and see if porting is feasible. Hopefully this reduces the app size, that is quite large with CharmRuby
iddan 9mo ago
Landing page is great: informative, visual example, clear code example. Love it
- Kerrick 9mo ago
  Thank you! I wrote the code snippets and picked the color palette, but the web design came by way of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46587284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46587284 And my wife, wonderful as always, helped critique the writing! My RadioMenu class's comments (in the "See More: Inline menu example" expando-section) were far worse before she helped.
rufugee 9mo ago
Looking forward to experimenting with it. Looks awesome!
pythonaut_16 9mo ago
Looks exciting! Does it have proper support for opening an external editor (via $EDITOR like nano, vim, etc?)? I ran into issues with that in Ink and had to switch over to Bubbletea, but I'd love to use Ruby instead of Go
- riffraff 9mo ago
  I know nothing about this, but bubbletea-ruby was in the news recently https://github.com/marcoroth/bubbletea-ruby https://github.com/marcoroth/bubbletea-ruby
- Kerrick 9mo ago
  Yes! While there's nothing built-in for that, you have full control over when you enter or exit raw mode, so your TUI can support opening an external editor. The TL;DR is you need to call `RatatuiRuby.restore_terminal` before handing off to $EDITOR, and you can call `RatatuiRuby.init_terminal` again to re-enter your TUI. Here's an example: https://www.ratatui-ruby.dev/docs/trunk/examples/app_external_editor/README_md.html https://www.ratatui-ruby.dev/docs/trunk/examples/app_externa... Also, if you enjoy Ink and Bubbletea, you probably enjoy MVU. If that's the case, check out the upcoming Rooibos framework I'm building on RatatuiRuby: https://rooibos.run https://rooibos.run. (Caveat: it doesn't yet have a way to restore/init the terminal, but I clearly need to make that happen.)
ianks 9mo ago
Love it
pjmlp 9mo ago
Living the 80s, I guess the current nostalgia wave across tapes, portable CD players, Vynil and co, also applies to computer interfaces.
- justifa 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - konmok 9mo ago
    Is there any evidence that Rust proponents did it, or are people assuming that because Rene has been critical of Rust? That would be horrible if true, but I'd rather not jump to conclusions that fast.
    - aw1621107 9mo ago
      You're not likely to get any useful response. This person has been spamming variations on this comment for some time now and has never bothered to substantiate their claims.
- Kerrick 9mo ago
  That's gotta be part of it. But I think another important part is how TUIs have important restrictions that lead to surprisingly delightful applications despite their downsides: - You don't have control over font size and your color palette can be limited (and chosen by the user in their Terminal settings), so it's hard to go too off-the-rails in aesthetic design - You work on a strict character grid, so it's hard to get things like padding, margin, and leading wrong. - You can't assume the use of a mouse, so everything has to work on keyboard shortcuts. This usually leads to extremely power-user-friendly tools. Plus, keyboard-driven, power-user-friendly UIs are hot right now, even on the web (Linear, Fernand, etc.).
anon5739483 9mo ago
Thank you for enabling my Ruby addiction. This looks amazing. Great work!
- Kerrick 9mo ago
  Every person I can enable to write Ruby instead of Go is a win in my book. :-)
jarek83 9mo ago
It looks great overall, but the example browser is something really special! Never seen such detailed walkthroughs before.
- Kerrick 9mo ago
  Thank you very much. I am not proud of the AI slop code [0] it took to get RDoc to generate the HTML for those pages, but I am proud of the result! [0]: https://git.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/tree/783a08eabe2307f581a30657d4b7a9b05b8653a7/item/tasks/doc.rake#L205 https://git.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/tree/783a08eabe2307f... [1]: https://www.ratatui-ruby.dev/docs/v1.0/examples/app_color_picker/app_rb.html https://www.ratatui-ruby.dev/docs/v1.0/examples/app_color_pi...
somebehemoth 9mo ago
How significant are AI contributions to this project?
- Kerrick 9mo ago
  Very significant. Nearly every commit has involved the use of one or more LLMs, as evidenced by the commit trailers. I would not have started this project without it, because I do not know Rust. Even the overall direction and architecture has involved roleplay-based "rubber ducking" with LLMs [0]. I've carefully stewarded & heavily edited the Ruby code in lib/ and test/, and the documentation (RDoc and Markdown). The Rust code has been left largely to the AI, with its quality kept presumably-okay by Clippy and extensive automated tests on the Ruby side. As for the non-library stuff ("internal" to the project), you can tell by browsing the tasks/ folder where I left the AI to its own devices [1], and where I heavily edited the Ruby code [2]. [0]: https://man.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/history/ecosystem-drafts/index.md https://man.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/history/ecosystem-dr... [1]: https://git.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/tree/783a08eabe2307f581a30657d4b7a9b05b8653a7/item/tasks/doc.rake https://git.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/tree/783a08eabe2307f... [2]: https://git.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/tree/783a08eabe2307f581a30657d4b7a9b05b8653a7/item/tasks/bump https://git.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/tree/783a08eabe2307f...
  - atmosx 9mo ago
    Great job :-)
kasane_teto 9mo ago
I’m gonna look into this. I was originally going to use the curses gem for my ruby tui apps but dealing with straight curses gets annoying quick. Thanks!

152 points by Kerrick 9mo ago

aaronbrethorst 9mo ago

super cool, great work Kerrick!

Kerrick 9mo ago
Thank you! My first Show HN in 2012 [0] was an inline TUI (of sorts) written in Ruby [1], so this is a great day. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4017933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4017933 [1]: https://kerrick.github.io/google/ https://kerrick.github.io/google/

knowitnone3 9mo ago

This is awesome, will definitely take this for a spin!

Kerrick 9mo ago
Thank you! Please let me know how you find it. I want to make sure the DX is as good as possible.

rubyfan 9mo ago

Looks really interesting, I’m excited to explore this.

cswilliams 9mo ago

Excited to try it out as well. I often need to build simple CLI based apps in ruby so often would reach for TTY Toolkit: https://ttytoolkit.org/ https://ttytoolkit.org/ However, I feel like it's in maintenance mode at this point, so glad to see some new options available.

3eb7988a1663 9mo ago
Shouldn't some software be allowed to be done? Maintenance mode on a TUI library seems a reasonable place to be.
- cswilliams 9mo ago
  Sure. I was probably trying to be too polite and didn't want to use the word "abandoned", but that's probably a better term for the library at this point. There's a good amount of open issues and PRs in many of the component gems that haven't been addressed in years and requests to help maintain it have gone unanswered[0]. [0] https://github.com/piotrmurach/tty-prompt/issues/210 https://github.com/piotrmurach/tty-prompt/issues/210
  - 3eb7988a1663 9mo ago
    Ah yes, quite a different kettle of fish.
- an0malous 9mo ago
  sure it’s a good TUI library, but is it agentic?

desireco42 9mo ago

I can't like this enough, Ruby is perfect language for TUI apps and emergence of TUI apps is really welcome change.

rbitar 9mo ago

Fantastic, this looks excellent and excited to try it

xfalcox 9mo ago

I just made a new installer for Discourse on CharmRuby, now I gotta check this out and see if porting is feasible. Hopefully this reduces the app size, that is quite large with CharmRuby

iddan 9mo ago

Landing page is great: informative, visual example, clear code example. Love it

Kerrick 9mo ago
Thank you! I wrote the code snippets and picked the color palette, but the web design came by way of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46587284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46587284 And my wife, wonderful as always, helped critique the writing! My RadioMenu class's comments (in the "See More: Inline menu example" expando-section) were far worse before she helped.

rufugee 9mo ago

Looking forward to experimenting with it. Looks awesome!

pythonaut_16 9mo ago

Looks exciting! Does it have proper support for opening an external editor (via $EDITOR like nano, vim, etc?)? I ran into issues with that in Ink and had to switch over to Bubbletea, but I'd love to use Ruby instead of Go

riffraff 9mo ago
I know nothing about this, but bubbletea-ruby was in the news recently https://github.com/marcoroth/bubbletea-ruby https://github.com/marcoroth/bubbletea-ruby
Kerrick 9mo ago
Yes! While there's nothing built-in for that, you have full control over when you enter or exit raw mode, so your TUI can support opening an external editor. The TL;DR is you need to call `RatatuiRuby.restore_terminal` before handing off to $EDITOR, and you can call `RatatuiRuby.init_terminal` again to re-enter your TUI. Here's an example: https://www.ratatui-ruby.dev/docs/trunk/examples/app_external_editor/README_md.html https://www.ratatui-ruby.dev/docs/trunk/examples/app_externa... Also, if you enjoy Ink and Bubbletea, you probably enjoy MVU. If that's the case, check out the upcoming Rooibos framework I'm building on RatatuiRuby: https://rooibos.run https://rooibos.run. (Caveat: it doesn't yet have a way to restore/init the terminal, but I clearly need to make that happen.)

ianks 9mo ago

Love it

pjmlp 9mo ago

Living the 80s, I guess the current nostalgia wave across tapes, portable CD players, Vynil and co, also applies to computer interfaces.

justifa 9mo ago
[flagged]
- konmok 9mo ago
  Is there any evidence that Rust proponents did it, or are people assuming that because Rene has been critical of Rust? That would be horrible if true, but I'd rather not jump to conclusions that fast.
  - aw1621107 9mo ago
    You're not likely to get any useful response. This person has been spamming variations on this comment for some time now and has never bothered to substantiate their claims.
Kerrick 9mo ago
That's gotta be part of it. But I think another important part is how TUIs have important restrictions that lead to surprisingly delightful applications despite their downsides: - You don't have control over font size and your color palette can be limited (and chosen by the user in their Terminal settings), so it's hard to go too off-the-rails in aesthetic design - You work on a strict character grid, so it's hard to get things like padding, margin, and leading wrong. - You can't assume the use of a mouse, so everything has to work on keyboard shortcuts. This usually leads to extremely power-user-friendly tools. Plus, keyboard-driven, power-user-friendly UIs are hot right now, even on the web (Linear, Fernand, etc.).

anon5739483 9mo ago

Thank you for enabling my Ruby addiction. This looks amazing. Great work!

Kerrick 9mo ago
Every person I can enable to write Ruby instead of Go is a win in my book. :-)

jarek83 9mo ago

It looks great overall, but the example browser is something really special! Never seen such detailed walkthroughs before.

Kerrick 9mo ago
Thank you very much. I am not proud of the AI slop code [0] it took to get RDoc to generate the HTML for those pages, but I am proud of the result! [0]: https://git.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/tree/783a08eabe2307f581a30657d4b7a9b05b8653a7/item/tasks/doc.rake#L205 https://git.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/tree/783a08eabe2307f... [1]: https://www.ratatui-ruby.dev/docs/v1.0/examples/app_color_picker/app_rb.html https://www.ratatui-ruby.dev/docs/v1.0/examples/app_color_pi...

somebehemoth 9mo ago

How significant are AI contributions to this project?

Kerrick 9mo ago
Very significant. Nearly every commit has involved the use of one or more LLMs, as evidenced by the commit trailers. I would not have started this project without it, because I do not know Rust. Even the overall direction and architecture has involved roleplay-based "rubber ducking" with LLMs [0]. I've carefully stewarded & heavily edited the Ruby code in lib/ and test/, and the documentation (RDoc and Markdown). The Rust code has been left largely to the AI, with its quality kept presumably-okay by Clippy and extensive automated tests on the Ruby side. As for the non-library stuff ("internal" to the project), you can tell by browsing the tasks/ folder where I left the AI to its own devices [1], and where I heavily edited the Ruby code [2]. [0]: https://man.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/history/ecosystem-drafts/index.md https://man.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/history/ecosystem-dr... [1]: https://git.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/tree/783a08eabe2307f581a30657d4b7a9b05b8653a7/item/tasks/doc.rake https://git.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/tree/783a08eabe2307f... [2]: https://git.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/tree/783a08eabe2307f581a30657d4b7a9b05b8653a7/item/tasks/bump https://git.sr.ht/~kerrick/ratatui_ruby/tree/783a08eabe2307f...
- atmosx 9mo ago
  Great job :-)

kasane_teto 9mo ago

I’m gonna look into this. I was originally going to use the curses gem for my ruby tui apps but dealing with straight curses gets annoying quick. Thanks!