|
| 1 | +--- |
| 2 | +draft: false |
| 3 | +date: 2022-12-08 |
| 4 | +categories: |
| 5 | + - DevLog |
| 6 | +authors: |
| 7 | + - davep |
| 8 | +--- |
| 9 | + |
| 10 | +# Be the Keymaster! |
| 11 | + |
| 12 | +## That didn't go to plan |
| 13 | + |
| 14 | +So... yeah... the blog. When I wrote [my previous (and first) |
| 15 | +post](https://textual.textualize.io/blog/2022/11/26/on-dog-food-the-original-metaverse-and-not-being-bored/) |
| 16 | +I had wanted to try and do a post towards the end of each week, highlighting |
| 17 | +what I'd done on the "dogfooding" front. Life kinda had other plans. Not in |
| 18 | +a terrible way, but it turns out that getting both flu and Covid jabs (AKA |
| 19 | +"jags" as they tend to say in my adopted home) on the same day doesn't |
| 20 | +really agree with me too well. |
| 21 | + |
| 22 | +I *have* been working, but there's been some odd moments in the past week |
| 23 | +and a bit and, last week, once I got to the end, I was glad for it to end. |
| 24 | +So no blog post happened. |
| 25 | + |
| 26 | +Anyway... |
| 27 | + |
| 28 | +<!-- more --> |
| 29 | + |
| 30 | +## What have I been up to? |
| 31 | + |
| 32 | +While mostly sat feeling sorry for myself on my sofa, I have been coding. |
| 33 | +Rather than list all the different things here in detail, I'll quickly |
| 34 | +mention them with links to where to find them and play with them if you |
| 35 | +want: |
| 36 | + |
| 37 | +### FivePyFive |
| 38 | + |
| 39 | +While my Textual 5x5 puzzle is [one of the examples in the Textual |
| 40 | +repo](https://github.com/Textualize/textual/tree/main/examples), I wanted to |
| 41 | +make it more widely available so people can download it with `pip` or |
| 42 | +[`pipx`](https://pypa.github.io/pipx/). See [over on |
| 43 | +PyPi](https://pypi.org/project/fivepyfive/) and see if you can solve it. ;-) |
| 44 | + |
| 45 | +<div class="video-wrapper"> |
| 46 | + <iframe |
| 47 | + width="560" height="315" |
| 48 | + src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rf34Z5r7Q60" |
| 49 | + title="PISpy" frameborder="0" |
| 50 | + allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" |
| 51 | + allowfullscreen> |
| 52 | + </iframe> |
| 53 | +</div> |
| 54 | + |
| 55 | +### textual-qrcode |
| 56 | + |
| 57 | +I wanted to put together a very small example of how someone may put |
| 58 | +together a third party widget library, and in doing so selected what I |
| 59 | +thought was going to be a mostly-useless example: [a wrapper around a |
| 60 | +text-based QR code generator |
| 61 | +website](https://pypi.org/project/textual-qrcode/). Weirdly I've had a |
| 62 | +couple of people express a need for QR codes in the terminal since |
| 63 | +publishing that! |
| 64 | + |
| 65 | + |
| 66 | + |
| 67 | +### PISpy |
| 68 | + |
| 69 | +[PISpy](https://pypi.org/project/pispy-client/) is a very simple |
| 70 | +terminal-based client for the [PyPi |
| 71 | +API](https://warehouse.pypa.io/api-reference/). Mostly it provides a |
| 72 | +hypertext interface to Python package details, letting you look up a package |
| 73 | +and then follow its dependency links. It's *very* simple at the moment, but |
| 74 | +I think more fun things can be done with this. |
| 75 | + |
| 76 | +<div class="video-wrapper"> |
| 77 | + <iframe |
| 78 | + width="560" height="315" |
| 79 | + src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yMGD6bXqIEo" |
| 80 | + title="PISpy" frameborder="0" |
| 81 | + allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" |
| 82 | + allowfullscreen> |
| 83 | + </iframe> |
| 84 | +</div> |
| 85 | + |
| 86 | +### OIDIA |
| 87 | + |
| 88 | +I'm a big fan of the use of streak-tracking in one form or another. |
| 89 | +Personally I use a [streak-tracking app](https://streaksapp.com/) for |
| 90 | +keeping tabs of all sorts of good (and bad) habits, and as a heavy user of |
| 91 | +all things Apple I make a lot of use of [the Fitness |
| 92 | +rings](https://www.apple.com/uk/watch/close-your-rings/), etc. So I got to |
| 93 | +thinking it might be fun to do a really simple, no shaming, no counting, |
| 94 | +just recording, steak app for the Terminal. |
| 95 | +[OIDIA](https://pypi.org/project/oidia/) is the result. |
| 96 | + |
| 97 | +<div class="video-wrapper"> |
| 98 | + <iframe |
| 99 | + width="560" height="315" |
| 100 | + src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3Kz8eUzO9-8" |
| 101 | + title="YouTube video player" |
| 102 | + frameborder="0" |
| 103 | + allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" |
| 104 | + allowfullscreen> |
| 105 | + </iframe> |
| 106 | +</div> |
| 107 | + |
| 108 | +As of the time of writing I only finished the first version of this |
| 109 | +yesterday evening, so there are plenty of rough edges; but having got it to |
| 110 | +a point where it performed the basic tasks I wanted from it, that seemed |
| 111 | +like a good time to publish. |
| 112 | + |
| 113 | +Expect to see this getting more updates and polish. |
| 114 | + |
| 115 | +## Wait, what about this Keymaster thing? |
| 116 | + |
| 117 | +Ahh, yes, about that... So one of the handy things I'm finding about Textual |
| 118 | +is its [key binding |
| 119 | +system](https://textual.textualize.io/guide/input/#bindings). The more |
| 120 | +I build Textual apps, the more I appreciate the bindings, how they can be |
| 121 | +associated with specific widgets, the use of actions (which can be used from |
| 122 | +other places too), etc. |
| 123 | + |
| 124 | +But... (there's always a "but" right -- I mean, there'd be no blog post to |
| 125 | +be had here otherwise). |
| 126 | + |
| 127 | +The terminal doesn't have access to all the key combinations you may want to |
| 128 | +use, and also, because some keys can't necessarily be "typed", at least not |
| 129 | +easily (think about it: there's no <kbd>F1</kbd> character, you have to type |
| 130 | +`F1`), many keys and key combinations need to be bound with specific names. |
| 131 | + |
| 132 | +So there's two problems here: how do I discover what keys even turn up in my |
| 133 | +application, and when they do, what should I call them when I pass them to |
| 134 | +[`Binding`](https://textual.textualize.io/api/binding/#textual.binding.Binding)? |
| 135 | + |
| 136 | +That felt like a *"well Dave just build an app for it!"* problem. So I did: |
| 137 | + |
| 138 | +<div class="video-wrapper"> |
| 139 | + <iframe |
| 140 | + width="560" height="315" |
| 141 | + src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-MV8LFfEOZo" |
| 142 | + title="YouTube video player" |
| 143 | + frameborder="0" |
| 144 | + allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" |
| 145 | + allowfullscreen> |
| 146 | + </iframe> |
| 147 | +</div> |
| 148 | + |
| 149 | +If you're building apps with Textual and you want to discover what keys turn |
| 150 | +up from your terminal and are available to your application, you can: |
| 151 | + |
| 152 | +```sh |
| 153 | +$ pipx install textual-keys |
| 154 | +``` |
| 155 | + |
| 156 | +and then just run `textual-keys` and start mashing the keyboard to find out. |
| 157 | + |
| 158 | +There's a good chance that this app, or at least a version of it, will make |
| 159 | +it into Textual itself (very likely as one of the |
| 160 | +[devtools](https://textual.textualize.io/guide/devtools/)). But for now it's |
| 161 | +just an easy install away. |
| 162 | + |
| 163 | +I think there's a call to be made here too: have you built anything to help |
| 164 | +speed up how you work with Textual, or just make the development experience |
| 165 | +"just so"? If so, do let us know, and come yell about it on the |
| 166 | +[`#show-and-tell` |
| 167 | +channel](https://discord.com/channels/1026214085173461072/1033752599112994867) |
| 168 | +in [our Discord server](https://discord.gg/Enf6Z3qhVr). |
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