[Urwid] Some general questions (plans, features, etc.)

[Ian Ward]

Claude Marinier wrote:
> 
> I have been looking for a scripting language and a UI library for small 
> applications which need to run through SSH or telnet. Python with urwid 
> may be the solution. What I have seen so far looks good.
> 
> This leads me to some questions about the project.
> 
> 1) What are the development and release plans? Is 1.0 coming soon?

There are a few things I would like to add before releasing 1.0:
- a widget like ListBox for horizontal scrolling
- vertical and horizontal scroll bars
- widget packing based on text content
- detection and handling of terminals that are not displaying UTF-8
characters correctly
- text selection in Edit widgets
- Canvas performance improvements
- add \t character handling to StandardTextLayout (maybe)
- 256 colour xterm support (maybe)
- bidirectional text support (maybe)
- user's manual

I'd like to get a 1.0 release out in the next 8 months or so, but that
all depends on how much free time I have.

> 2) Are most of the planned features already implemented?

Yes. The big disruptive change was UTF-8 support in 0.9.0, most of the
upcoming changes are fairly straightforward.

> 3) After 1.0 is released, will you pursue stability rather than more 
> features?

I think that except for very new features Urwid is very stable right
now.  I use the latest versions with a program I rely on every day.

After 1.0 I plan to put the core part of Urwid into maintenance mode,
and only add things that use the existing API: new widgets, text
layouts, examples etc.

Hope this answers your questions,
Ian