Overview

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TUI from Zero teaches you to build a pure-Rust terminal-UI framework from first principles to a working ptop-mini process monitor. Across five modules, you'll learn the wire format of a terminal — cells, ANSI escape sequences, Unicode block elements, and Braille code points — and how CellBuffer and DiffRenderer turn those primitives into a zero-allocation steady state. You'll master the Elm-style init/update/view shape, composite layout with Container/Row/Column, the .prs declarative scene format, and probar snapshot testing so every render byte is deterministic in CI. The capstone is ptop-mini, a Rust process monitor whose production binary swaps a Snapshot fixture for a live /proc reader without changing one line of the view function. Every widget is gated by a YAML contract and a probar snapshot test, so the framework you build is provable, not merely working. You should be comfortable with intermediate Rust — ownership and borrowing, traits and generics, Result and the ? operator. No prior terminal-UI experience is required.

Syllabus

Render — CellBuffer and the Widget Trait

Build the rendering core of a Rust TUI from first principles. Learn how a terminal is a 2D grid of cells, how double-width Unicode is kept safe, why ANSI escape sequences are the wire format, and how CellBuffer and the Widget trait give you one paint(rect) method that composes everything else.

React — Elm-style Event Loop

Wire user input to state through the Elm Architecture's three pure functions: init, update, and view. Model the counter app as a struct, define Msg as an exhaustive enum, and run crossterm's poll/read loop with raw mode. Map every KeyEvent through a total dispatch function so update never sees noise, and exit cleanly on Esc, Ctrl-C, or q.

Compose — Widgets in Anger

Compose widgets that do real work — Sparklines from eight Unicode block glyphs, BrailleGraphs at 4x resolution, a CpuGrid that wraps one cell per core, a ProcessTable that scrolls, and a MemoryBar that fills. Each widget is one paint(rect) call; together they form a live system-monitor TUI.

Declare and Verify — YAML Scenes and Probar Tests

Move from imperative paint calls to declarative scenes. Write .prs files that describe layout, then watch a 200-line recursive-descent compiler reconcile them against your widgets. Lock the look with probar snapshot tests — stringified CellBuffers, inline or file-backed goldens, byte-identical between runs, all running in CI without a TTY.

Untitled Module

Bring everything together: a deterministic Snapshot fixture feeds a single pure view that composes CpuGrid, Sparkline, MemoryBar, and ProcessTable into one ptop-mini dashboard, then swap the fixture for a /proc reader to run the same view live.