Contour - A modern C++ Terminal Emulator

IMPORANT: THIS PROJECT IS IN ALPHA STAGE & ACTIVE DEVELOPMENT

contour is a modern terminal emulator, for everyday use. It is fully seperating emulation from graphical representation for clear seperation of concerns but also for special features to come before version 1.0 is released (headless terminal server with GUI & TUI frontends).

Features

✅ Available on all 3 major platforms, Linux, OS/X, Windows.
✅ Unicode: Emoji support (-: 🌈 💝 😛 👪 - including ZWJ, VS15, VS16 emojis :-)
✅ Unicode: Grapheme cluster support
✅ Font ligatures support (such as in Fira Code).
✅ Bold and italic fonts
✅ GPU-accelerated rendering.
✅ Vertical Line Markers (quickly jump to markers in your history!)
✅ Blurred behind transparent background when using Windows 10 or KDE window manager on Linux.
✅ Runtime configuration reload
✅ 256-color and Truecolor support
✅ Key binding customization
✅ Color Schemes
✅ Profiles (grouped customization of: color scheme, login shell, and related behaviours)
✅ Clickable hyperlinks via OSC 8

A word on vertical line markers

Suppose you type a lot in the terminal, and I bet you do. Some commands may have inconveniently long output and you need a way to conveniently scroll the terminal viewport up to the top of that command. This is what this feature is there for. You can easily walk up/down your markers like you'd walk up code folds or markers in VIM or other editors.

Set a mark:

echo -ne "\033[>M"

Example key bindings:

input_mapping:
    - { mods: [Alt, Shift], key: 'k', action: ScrollMarkUp }
    - { mods: [Alt, Shift], key: 'j', action: ScrollMarkDown }

It is recommended to integrate the marker into your command prompt, such as $PS1 in bash or sh to have automatic markers set.

CLI - Command Line Interface

Usage: contour [options]
Contour Terminal Emulator

Options:
  -h, --help            Displays this help.
  -v, --version         Displays version information.
  -c, --config <PATH>   Path to configuration file to load at startup
                        [~/.config/contour/conour.yml].
  -p, --profile <NAME>  Terminal Profile to load.

Example Configuration File

word_delimiters: " /\\()\"'-.,:;<>~!@#$%^&*+=[]{}~?|│"
default_profile: ubuntu_vm
profiles:
    ubuntu_vm:
        shell: "ssh ubuntu-vm"
        terminal_size:
            columns: 130
            lines: 30
        environment:
            TERM: xterm-256color
            COLORTERM: truecolor
        fontSize: 12
        font:
            regular: "Fira Code"
            bold: "Fira Code:style=bold"
            italic: "Hack:style=italic"
            bold_italic: "Hack:style=bold italic"
            emoji: "emoji"
        tab_width: 8
        history:
            limit: 8000
            scroll_multiplier: 3
            auto_scroll_on_update: true
        cursor:
            shape: block
            blinking: true
        background:
            opacity: 0.9
            blur: false
        colors: google_dark

color_schemes:
    google_dark:
        cursor: '#b0b030'
        selection: '#30c0c0'
        default:
            background: '#1d1f21'
            foreground: '#c5c8c6'
        normal:
            black:   '#1d1f21'
            red:     '#cc342b'
            green:   '#198844'
            yellow:  '#fba922'
            blue:    '#3971ed'
            magenta: '#a36ac7'
            cyan:    '#3971ed'
            white:   '#c5c8c6'
        bright:
            black:   '#969896'
            red:     '#cc342b'
            green:   '#198844'
            yellow:  '#fba922'
            blue:    '#3971ed'
            magenta: '#a36ac7'
            cyan:    '#3971ed'
            white:   '#ffffff'

input_mapping:
    - { mods: [Alt],            key: Enter,         action: ToggleFullscreen }
    - { mods: [Control, Alt],   key: S,             action: ScreenshotVT }
    - { mods: [Control, Shift], key: Equal,         action: IncreaseFontSize }
    - { mods: [Control, Shift], key: Minus,         action: DecreaseFontSize }
    - { mods: [Control, Shift], key: N,             action: NewTerminal }
    - { mods: [Control],        mouse: WheelUp,     action: IncreaseFontSize }
    - { mods: [Control],        mouse: WheelDown,   action: DecreaseFontSize }
    - { mods: [Alt],            mouse: WheelUp,     action: IncreaseOpacity }
    - { mods: [Alt],            mouse: WheelDown,   action: DecreaseOpacity }
    - { mods: [Control],        key: '0',           action: ResetFontSize }
    - { mods: [Shift],          mouse: WheelUp,     action: ScrollPageUp }
    - { mods: [Shift],          mouse: WheelDown,   action: ScrollPageDown }
    - { mods: [],               mouse: WheelUp,     action: ScrollUp }
    - { mods: [],               mouse: WheelDown,   action: ScrollDown }
    - { mods: [Shift],          key: UpArrow,       action: ScrollOneUp }
    - { mods: [Shift],          key: DownArrow,     action: ScrollOneDown }
    - { mods: [Shift],          key: PageUp,        action: ScrollPageUp }
    - { mods: [Shift],          key: PageDown,      action: ScrollPageDown }
    - { mods: [Shift],          key: Home,          action: ScrollToTop }
    - { mods: [Shift],          key: End,           action: ScrollToBottom }
    - { mods: [Alt, Shift],     key: 'k',           action: ScrollMarkUp }
    - { mods: [Alt, Shift],     key: 'j',           action: ScrollMarkDown }

logging:
    file: "/path/to/contour.log"
    parse_errors: true
    invalid_output: true
    unsupported_output: true
    raw_input: false
    raw_output: false
    trace_input: false
    trace_output: false

Installing from source

Prerequisites Linux

This is tested on Ubuntu 19.04, but any recent Linux with latest C++17 compiler should do:

sudo apt install \
    "g++-9" libfreetype6-dev qtbase5-dev libqt5gui5 extra-cmake-modules \
    libfontconfig1-dev libharfbuzz-dev

To enable blur-behind feature on transparent background, you'll need the following packages:

sudo apt install libkf5windowsystem-dev

And set pass -DCONTOUR_BLUR_PLATFORM_KWIN=ON to cmake when configuring the project.

In case you want to improve performance slightly and run at at least Linux, you can add -DLIBTERMINAL_EXECUTION_PAR=ON to the cmake configuration and make sure to have libtbb-dev installed beforehand.

Prerequisites Windows 10

For Windows, you must have Windows 10, 2018 Fall Creators Update, and Visual Studio 2019, installed. It will neither build nor run on any prior Windows OS, due to libterminal making use of ConPTY API.

vcpkg install freetype fontconfig harfbuzz qt5-base

Prerequisites Mac OS/X

brew install freetype fontconfig harfbuzz boost qt5

References

VT510: VT510 Manual, see Chapter 5.
ECMA-35: Character Code Structure and Extension Techniques
ECMA-43: 8-bit Coded Character Set Structure and Rules
ECMA-48: Control Functions for Coded Character Sets
ISO/IEC 8613-6: Character content architectures
xterm: xterm control sequences
console_codes Linux console codes
Summary of ANSI standards for ASCII terminals
Text Terminal HOWTO (Chapter 7.2, PTY)

License

Contour - A modern C++ Terminal Emulator
-------------------------------------------

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.

3n16m4/contour