Tenets higher in the list have precedence over tenets lower in the list.
Keyboard Required; Mouse Optional - Terminal users expect full functionality without having to pick up the mouse. At the same time they love being able to use the mouse when it makes sense to do so. We strive to ensure anything that can be done with the keyboard is also possible with the mouse. We avoid features that are only useable with the mouse.
Be Consistent With the User's Platform - Users get to choose the platform they run Terminal.Gui apps on and those apps should respond to mouse input in a way that is consistent with the platform. For example, on Windows ???
Terminal.Gui provides the following APIs for handling mouse input:
Each of these APIs are described more fully below.
Mouse Bindings is the preferred way of handling mouse input in View implementations. The View calls Terminal.Gui.View.AddCommand(Terminal.Gui.Command,System.Func{System.Nullable{System.Boolean}}) to declare it supports a particular command and then uses @Terminal.Gui.MouseBindings to indicate which mouse events will invoke the command. For example, if a View wants to respond to the user using the mouse wheel to scroll up, it would do this:
public MyView : View
{
AddCommand (Command.ScrollUp, () => ScrollVertical (-1));
MouseBindings.Add (MouseFlags.Button1DoubleClick, Command.ScrollUp);
}
The Command enum lists generic operations that are implemented by views.
At the core of Terminal.Gui's mouse API is the @Terminal.Gui.MouseEventArgs class. The @Terminal.Gui.MouseEventArgs class provides a platform-independent abstraction for common mouse events. Every mouse event can be fully described in a @Terminal.Gui.MouseEventArgs instance, and most of the mouse-related APIs are simply helper functions for decoding a @Terminal.Gui.MouseEventArgs.
When the user does something with the mouse, the ConsoleDriver
maps the platform-specific mouse event into a MouseEventArgs
and calls Application.RaiseMouseEvent
. Then, Application.RaiseMouseEvent
determines which View
the event should go to. The View.OnMouseEvent
method can be overridden or the View.MouseEvent
event can be subscribed to, to handle the low-level mouse event. If the low-level event is not handled by a view, Application
will then call the appropriate high-level helper APIs. For example, if the user double-clicks the mouse, View.OnMouseClick
will be called/View.MouseClick
will be raised with the event arguments indicating which mouse button was double-clicked.
The @Terminal.Gui.Application.MouseEvent event can be used if an application wishes to receive all mouse events.
The @Terminal.Gui.View.MouseEnter and @Terminal.Gui.View.MouseLeave events enable a View to take action when the mouse is over the view. Internally, this is used to enable @Terminal.Gui.View.Highlight.