Genro Textual

A declarative TUI framework that builds terminal interfaces from Bag structures using Textual as the rendering engine.

The Idea

Instead of writing imperative widget code, you describe your UI in a recipe — a series of builder calls that create a Bag structure. The framework compiles this structure and renders it as a Textual application.

from genro_textual import TextualApp

class MyApp(TextualApp):
    def recipe(self, page):
        page.binding(key="q", action="quit", description="Quit")
        page.static("^greeting")
        page.input(value="^form.name", placeholder="Your name")

    def setup(self):
        self.data["greeting"] = "Hello, World!"
        self.data["form.name"] = ""
        super().setup()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    MyApp().run()

Key Concepts

Recipe — Declare your UI structure with builder calls
Bag-driven — All state lives in Bag structures (data, source, compiled)
Reactive binding — ^pointer syntax binds widgets to data paths
Bidirectional — Input widgets write back to data on blur
CSS in recipe — Inline stylesheets via page.css()
Puppeteer/Puppet — TextualApp (logic) drives LiveApp (rendering)

Architecture

        graph LR
    R[Recipe] --> S[Source Bag]
    S --> C[Compiler]
    C --> CB[Compiled Bag]
    CB --> RE[Renderer]
    RE --> W[Widget Tree]
    D[Data Bag] -.->|binding| CB
    W -.->|blur/change| D

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