Create text UI inspired by Turbo Vision

[HebaruSan]

CKAN Console UI

There has been discussion lately of replacing CKAN's current WinForms GUI with a GTK# one (#1840), as well as of enhancing the CmdLine interface (#2161, #2174). While this pull request doesn't do either of those things, I think it's related and may satisfy some of the needs that inspired those requests.

This pull request adds a new cross-platform UI modeled after the pre-Windows text interfaces of the late 1980s and early 1990s such as Borland's Turbo Vision and IBM's Common User Access, influenced by the Debian package management application "aptitude", with a few modern tweaks. I hope it can provide value in the niche between a full-on GUI and somewhat cumbersome command line tools.

Status: Open for more feedback, but probably ready to merge

I think this project is pretty complete; I've addressed all bugs that I was able to find and added all the reasonable features I could think of. However, my knowledge of CKAN is not as deep or thorough as others', so there's a good chance I missed something. Please help me find:

• Unhandled exceptions/crashes and other bugs
• Missing features
• Better names for anything and everything
• Colors that are hard to read
• Bad layout
• How to make useful tests
• Whether the key bindings work on MacOS X
• Etc.

I developed this on Linux and also tested in a Windows VM.
I do not have a Mac available for testing.

New-ish features

• Import downloads option (related to Allow manual downloads of mod packages #1788)
• After registry update, Y/N prompt to show newly compatible mods if any (related to Suggestion: Highlight new additions when updating repository #877 and Add "Updated" filter type #1766 and A filter should show mods that are new, and those that are compatible with my version for the first time. #1923)
• Search of ~dkeyword shows reverse dependencies (related to Show inverse relationships #1100, Search on Relationships #1494, and Feature request: Show reverse depends relationships NetKAN#5646)
• Instead of a forced registry auto-update, shows the approximate time since last update so user can press ctrl-R if needed (related to [Feature] Auto-Refresh Once Daily #2099)
• Shows where a download is hosted on the mod info screen (related to Added download info to Metadata page #2062)
• Shows when a mod was installed on the mod info screen (related to Allow user to see when a mod was installed.  #954 and New Mod column of CKAN Main page of "Mod install date" #1933)
• Can view the mod info screen for optional dependencies (related to Ability to open mod thread from suggestions page #858 and Show the sidebar with Metadata (at least) for changeset stages #1868)
• Audit recommendations option to browse optional dependencies of already installed mods (related to Search/filter for mods recommended/suggested by installed mods #1764)
• Text search looks at identifier, name, and abstract (related to Searching mods by their abbreviation / alternate names #1313)

Dependencies

There are no third party dependencies; the whole thing is built directly on top of Console.BackgroundColor, Console.SetCursorPosition, etc., using classes contained in the CKAN\ConsoleUI\Toolkit folder (all written by me and kosher to release under CKAN's license). This has several advantages:

• No risk that a library we depend on will disappear or cease to be supported
• No risk of being affected by bugs we can't fix in a third party package
• We can safely extend the toolkit with more UI elements and refactor whatever we like as needed
• Strong cross-platform support, since it can run anywhere .NET and Mono can

Screenshots

When you run ckan consoleui, a futuristic splash/loading screen appears:

If you have a default game instance, the next screen is the list of mods:

In modern style, the top right corner features a search box:

... which can also search by @author:

... as well as a dropdown "hamburger" menu for less commonly accessed functions:

... including sorting the list:

After you update the registry, it alerts you to any newly added mods, since that's a common request on the forum thread:

A help screen summarizes the key bindings and special search formats:

You can press enter on the mod list screen to view detailed information about a mod, including relationships, versions, and the text description:

Pressing Ctrl+D on that screen jumps you to an abbreviated version of the install screen to download the mod:

Another screen allows the user to work with game instances; this is the first screen if you have no default instance:

(This was how I found the issue fixed by #2175.)

The user can create and edit game instances on this screen:

Once you've selected some mods to install, F9 takes you to the installation screen, which first prompts you to select any needed dependencies:

Then confirms the installation:

(This was why I wanted to simplify IUser in #2163.)

Then performs the downloads and installs:

[dbent]

I think I'm in love.

[politas]

This is awesome! I especially love the splash screen! I'd say it reminds me of things "back in the day", but it also strongly reminds me of the Midnight Commander, which I use every day.

[politas]

@KSP-CKAN/macos-testers, any chance y'all can give this a try?

[HebaruSan]

@KSP-CKAN/macos-testers, any chance y'all can give this a try?

That group has only one member other than you; maybe I can recruit people who submitted Mac-related issues... @Maxzhao1999, would you be available to report bugs on a Mac? I can provide a compiled EXE for testing, just let me know.

I started another branch locally to add support for the current head of #1888. Hopefully git won't make it too difficult to keep it up to date with both projects.

[HebaruSan]

Attempting to rope in some more admitted Mac users from #760 and #1334: @bax-, @alampros, @savagerose, @Heliosmaster, @desplesda, @mgsdk, @RichardLake, @Crazor, @CalMlynarczyk

Would any of you be willing to take the changes from this PR for a test drive on your Mac? Compiled EXE available upon request.

[Maxzhao1999]

I’d love to help! Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll try it out this weekend.

[HebaruSan]

@Maxzhao1999 , that's fantastic, thank you!!

• (Download removed; see subsequent post for more up to date versions)

If you unzip that file, there should be a ckan.exe inside. Try this:

1. Open a Terminal
2. cd to the directory where you unzipped the file
3. Run mono ckan.exe consoleui

That should get you into the new screens. To the best of my knowledge, no one has run this on OSX at all yet, so for all I know it may not even run, or it may be completely unusable. I'm interested to know about any problems that you find in trying typical use cases, but especially cases where it works differently than it does on Windows or Linux.

• View the list of mods and scroll through it
• View info about a mod and download it
• Install a mod
• Uninstall a mod
• Quit the program
• Etc.

I am mostly concerned about the key bindings, since I had to make platform-specific adjustments to get them working the same way on Linux and Windows. Keep an eye on the bottom bar where key bindings are listed, and check the F10 menu and the Alt+H help screen to see a few more key bindings. If any of them don't seem to function, then I might have to create an additional testing EXE to capture the key values that are being sent. But I'd like to hold off on doing that until it's necessary.

Thanks again!

[Maxzhao1999]

Thanks for the detailed response, I’ll go through them and give you feedback hopefully in the next few days. Glad to be of help!

[Maxzhao1999]

Hey, I've had a quick look at the program and here are some feedbacks.

• The program runs in macOS.

• No problem scrolling through the mods

• No problem viewing info for mods

• Search works well, the shortcuts such as @author works fine too

• No problem quitting the program, F10 works fine

Some problems include:

• Cannot install or uninstall mods, Alt-A, +sign and Alt-D does not work

• Help screen can be opened by F1 but not Alt-H

Also, I'd just like to say that although I've not been able to install or uninstall any mods, the consoleui seems to be much smoother than the current GUI and it looks amazing!

I'd love to help further!

[HebaruSan]

Thanks, that's exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for! 👍

It sounds like the Alt keys are a problem, which in retrospect is not surprising, so I've reassigned them:

Function	Previous key	New key
Quit	Alt+X	Ctrl+Q (Alt+X still silently supported on Windows and Linux)
Save instance	Alt+A	F2 (the save key from Turbo C++)
Apply changes	Alt+A	F9 (the build key from Turbo C++)
Update registry	Alt+U	F5, Ctrl+R (browser refresh keys)
Download mod	Alt+D	Ctrl+D
Help	Alt+H	(hidden on Mac since F1 works)

The plus key is going to be more complicated; we'll need to capture info about the key so I know how to fix it. Since I've had to do this previously for other issues, I decided to add it as a menu option.

New download:

• (Download removed; see subsequent post for more up to date versions)

Please download and unzip that new version, start it with mono ckan.exe consoleui --debug (the --debug part is new), and find this option in the menu:

When it prompts you to press a key, press your plus key, and it should report details about it. Please let me know what it says!

[Maxzhao1999]

Below is what it says:
Key: 0
KeyChar: 0x3d
Modifiers: 0

Also, the new keys above works! Yay!

[HebaruSan]

Thanks for testing!
Those values seem to correspond to pressing the '=' equals key without shift; or at least that's what it says for me when I do that.
What happens if you capture the key while holding down shift?

[Maxzhao1999]

Aha, sorry about that, silly mistake. Here’s the correct one:
Key: Add
KeyChar: 0x2b
Modifiers: 0

[HebaruSan]

Hmm, that should be what it's already using. Are you sure that you were pressing shift before when trying to install mods? Maybe that key isn't clear enough...

[pjf]

This... this is beautiful. Thank you.

[Maxzhao1999]

That might just be the problem, me being silly XD

[Maxzhao1999]

I’ll check if everything is working again tmr morning and will add a new version of Mac CKAN just for this UI on top of the old one if so.

[HebaruSan]

Finally looked into what "repositories" refers to (I had not used that feature before). They're now listed on the screen for editing an instance (I called them "Mod List Sources" instead of "repositories" because it's ambiguous, CKAN-meta is a repository, NetKAN is a repository, etc.):

The screen for adding/editing a repo allows free editing with basic validation and has the built-in default repos listed in its main menu:

[politas]

NetKAN is not a repository. NetKAN is metametadata to automate repository updates.

[HebaruSan]

I know it's not a "repository" in the sense that Repository.cs means it, but it is in this sense:

We also have the resources.repository metadata for pointing to a mod's GitHub page. I just wanted something that would answer the question, repository of what?

[DyBev]

Is there a way for us to use the import from a .ckan file or is this something not supported / missing feature? I can't seem to find anything about it.

[HebaruSan]

I think that's not currently in the ConsoleUI, but you can use the command line tools to do it:

mono /path/to/ckan.exe install -c myfilename.ckan