t.c.i.text : module documentation

Character attribute manipulation API

This module provides a domain-specific language (using Python syntax) for the creation of text with additional display attributes associated with it. It is intended as an alternative to manually building up strings containing ECMA 48 character attribute control codes. It currently supports foreground and background colors (black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, and white), intensity selection, underlining, blinking and reverse video. Character set selection support is planned.

Character attributes are specified by using two Python operations: attribute lookup and indexing. For example, the string "Hello world" with red foreground and all other attributes set to their defaults, assuming the name twisted.conch.insults.text.attributes has been imported and bound to the name "A" (with the statement from twisted.conch.insults.text import attributes as A, for example) one uses this expression:

| A.fg.red["Hello world"]

Other foreground colors are set by substituting their name for "red". To set both a foreground and a background color, this expression is used:

| A.fg.red[A.bg.green["Hello world"]]

Note that either A.bg.green can be nested within A.fg.red or vice versa. Also note that multiple items can be nested within a single index operation by separating them with commas:

| A.bg.green[A.fg.red["Hello"], " ", A.fg.blue["world"]]

Other character attributes are set in a similar fashion. To specify a blinking version of the previous expression:

| A.blink[A.bg.green[A.fg.red["Hello"], " ", A.fg.blue["world"]]]

A.reverseVideo, A.underline, and A.bold are also valid.

A third operation is actually supported: unary negation. This turns off an attribute when an enclosing expression would otherwise have caused it to be on. For example:

| A.underline[A.fg.red["Hello", -A.underline[" world"]]]

Author

Jp Calderone

Class	CharacterAttributes	Undocumented
Function	flatten	Serialize a sequence of characters with attribute information
Class	_Attribute	Undocumented
Class	_NormalAttr	Undocumented
Class	_OtherAttr	Undocumented
Class	_ColorAttr	Undocumented
Class	_ForegroundColorAttr	Undocumented
Class	_BackgroundColorAttr	Undocumented

| from twisted.conch.insults.text import flatten, attributes as A
| from twisted.conch.insults.helper import CharacterAttribute
| print flatten(
|     A.normal[A.bold[A.fg.red['He'], A.fg.green['ll'], A.fg.magenta['o'], ' ',
|                     A.fg.yellow['Wo'], A.fg.blue['rl'], A.fg.cyan['d!']]],
|     CharacterAttribute())