Extend PromptSession to a full screen application

[techtonik]

Instead of trying to embed prompt into full screen app (#652 #640), is it possible to just extend PromptSession, because it is already the app that runs the event loop?

[jonathanslenders]

Hi @techtonik, I'm really not sure about this, honestly. I've no idea what the APIs would look like in this case.
If somebody can make a proof-of-concept, I will definitely like to have a look at that.

I understand that combining the ideas of what PromptSession offers, with a full-screen application and pop-up dialogs, is not straightforward, right now, but I'd like to grow this slowly, and see how we can move towards the most flexible architecture.

[techtonik]

Here is how to get application object from PromptSession.

session = PromptSession(os.getcwd() + ">", key_bindings=global_kb, bottom_toolbar=bottom_toolbar, style=style)
app = session.app

Now it needs some experiments - how to add/call Dialogs to/from it.

[decentral1se]

Could you explain further your thinking about why this would be good @techtonik?

My thoughts so far:

Is it possible to de-couple the application from the PromptSession and keep the feature set?

From my limited understanding, right now, we need to build a Window/Buffer/BufferControl setup to start to approach the feature set of the PromptSession in full screen applications. Since a big part of the full screen application (so far) is configuring the application and setting up (sometimes complicated) Layouts - I think I would rather see a PromptSession that has all the niceties that I can just simply pass to the Application in the Layout. I still setup my own event loop.

[techtonik]

The only reason I have is that learning curve to go from prompt tutorial to a full screen application is too steep. Mentioning how to embed PromptSession (or underlying object) into another layout would help. Without this, there is a lot of manipulation with invisible layouts in my head that I can not compile yet.

Couldn't the layout engine operate at a lower level? For example it would directly handle multiplexing stdin/stdout, which would eliminate the need for a major refactor.

[codingedward]

Thank you for this great library!

I am also trying to create a full-screen application that embeds a PromptSession like so:

+--------------------+------------+
|                    |            |
|    PromptSession   |  Custom    |
|       Window       |  Window    |
|                    |            |
+--------------------+------------+

I was able to get the following example working but I am now facing an issue with the fact that I can't use a VSplit in place of HSplit since the custom_window occupies the whole application's window width.

class MyPromptSession(PromptSession):
    def _create_layout(self):
        custom_buffer = Buffer()
        custom_window = Window(BufferControl(buffer=custom_buffer))
        layout = super()._create_layout()
        main_window = layout.container
        return Layout(
            HSplit(children=[main_window, custom_window], # <-- I can't use VSplit here :(
                padding_char='*',
                padding=1,
            ), 
            main_window
        )

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

[lfvjimisola]

@codingedward Is the rest of your code available somewhere for me to have a look at?