2022-12-08 DevLog from davep

Author: davep

docs/blog/images/2022-12-08-davep-devlog/textual-qrcode.png

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+---
+draft: false
+date: 2022-12-08
+categories:
+  - DevLog
+authors:
+  - davep
+---
+
+# Be the Keymaster!
+
+## That didn't go to plan
+
+So... yeah... the blog. When I wrote [my previous (and first)
+post](https://textual.textualize.io/blog/2022/11/26/on-dog-food-the-original-metaverse-and-not-being-bored/)
+I had wanted to try and do a post towards the end of each week, highlighting
+what I'd done on the "dogfooding" front. Life kinda had other plans. Not in
+a terrible way, but it turns out that getting both flu and Covid jabs (AKA
+"jags" as they tend to say in my adopted home) on the same day doesn't
+really agree with me too well.
+
+I *have* been working, but there's been some odd moments in the past week
+and a bit and, last week, once I got to the end, I was glad for it to end.
+So no blog post happened.
+
+Anyway...
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+## What have I been up to?
+
+While mostly sat feeling sorry for myself on my sofa, I have been coding.
+Rather than list all the different things here in detail, I'll quickly
+mention them with links to where to find them and play with them if you
+want:
+
+### FivePyFive
+
+While my Textual 5x5 puzzle is [one of the examples in the Textual
+repo](https://github.com/Textualize/textual/tree/main/examples), I wanted to
+make it more widely available so people can download it with `pip` or
+[`pipx`](https://pypa.github.io/pipx/). See [over on
+PyPi](https://pypi.org/project/fivepyfive/) and see if you can solve it. ;-)
+
+<div class="video-wrapper">
+    <iframe
+        width="560" height="315"
+        src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rf34Z5r7Q60"
+        title="PISpy" frameborder="0"
+        allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"
+        allowfullscreen>
+    </iframe>
+</div>
+
+### textual-qrcode
+
+I wanted to put together a very small example of how someone may put
+together a third party widget library, and in doing so selected what I
+thought was going to be a mostly-useless example: [a wrapper around a
+text-based QR code generator
+website](https://pypi.org/project/textual-qrcode/). Weirdly I've had a
+couple of people express a need for QR codes in the terminal since
+publishing that!
+
+![A Textual QR Code](../images/2022-12-08-davep-devlog/textual-qrcode.png)
+
+### PISpy
+
+[PISpy](https://pypi.org/project/pispy-client/) is a very simple
+terminal-based client for the [PyPi
+API](https://warehouse.pypa.io/api-reference/). Mostly it provides a
+hypertext interface to Python package details, letting you look up a package
+and then follow its dependency links. It's *very* simple at the moment, but
+I think more fun things can be done with this.
+
+<div class="video-wrapper">
+    <iframe
+        width="560" height="315"
+        src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yMGD6bXqIEo"
+        title="PISpy" frameborder="0"
+        allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"
+        allowfullscreen>
+    </iframe>
+</div>
+
+### OIDIA
+
+I'm a big fan of the use of streak-tracking in one form or another.
+Personally I use a [streak-tracking app](https://streaksapp.com/) for
+keeping tabs of all sorts of good (and bad) habits, and as a heavy user of
+all things Apple I make a lot of use of [the Fitness
+rings](https://www.apple.com/uk/watch/close-your-rings/), etc. So I got to
+thinking it might be fun to do a really simple, no shaming, no counting,
+just recording, steak app for the Terminal.
+[OIDIA](https://pypi.org/project/oidia/) is the result.
+
+<div class="video-wrapper">
+    <iframe
+        width="560" height="315"
+        src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3Kz8eUzO9-8"
+        title="YouTube video player"
+        frameborder="0"
+        allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"
+        allowfullscreen>
+    </iframe>
+</div>
+
+As of the time of writing I only finished the first version of this
+yesterday evening, so there are plenty of rough edges; but having got it to
+a point where it performed the basic tasks I wanted form it, that seemed
+like a good time to publish.
+
+Expect to see this getting more updates and polish.
+
+## Wait, what about this Keymaster thing?
+
+Ahh, yes, about that... So one of the handy things I'm finding about Textual
+is its [key binding
+system](https://textual.textualize.io/guide/input/#bindings). The more
+I build Textual apps, the more I appreciate the bindings, how they can be
+associated with specific widgets, the use of actions (which can be used from
+other places too), etc.
+
+But... (there's always a "but" right -- I mean, there'd be no blog post to
+be had here otherwise).
+
+The terminal doesn't have access to all the key combinations you may want to
+use, and also, because some keys can't necessarily be "typed", at least not
+easily (think about it: there's no <kbd>F1</kbd> character, you have to type
+`F1`), many keys and key combinations need to be bound with specific names.
+
+So there's two problems here: how do I discover what keys even turn up in my
+application, and when they do, what should I call them when I pass them to
+[`Binding`](https://textual.textualize.io/api/binding/#textual.binding.Binding)?
+
+That felt like a *"well Dave just build an app for it!"* problem. So I did:
+
+<div class="video-wrapper">
+    <iframe
+        width="560" height="315"
+        src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-MV8LFfEOZo"
+        title="YouTube video player"
+        frameborder="0"
+        allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"
+        allowfullscreen>
+    </iframe>
+</div>
+
+If you're building apps with Textual and you want to discover what keys turn
+up from your terminal and are available to your application, you can:
+
+```sh
+$ pipx install textual-keys
+```
+
+and then just run `textual-keys` and start mashing the keyboard to find out.
+
+There's a good chance that this app, or at least a version of it, will make
+it into Textual itself (very likely as one of the
+[devtools](https://textual.textualize.io/guide/devtools/)). But for now it's
+just an easy install away.
+
+I think there's a call to be made here too: have you built anything to help
+speed up how you work with Textual, or just make the development experience
+"just so"? If so, do let is know, and come yell about it on the
+[`#show-and-tell`
+channel](https://discord.com/channels/1026214085173461072/1033752599112994867)
+in [our Discord server](https://discord.gg/Enf6Z3qhVr).