How about colors and terminal graphics in std.format?

[Christian Manning]

On Monday, 12 March 2012 at 09:51:08 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2012-03-12 03:16, Chad J wrote:
>> I remember doing colored terminal output in Python. It was 
>> pretty nifty,
>> and allows for some slick CLI design. I think D can do better 
>> by putting
>> it in the standard library.
>>
>> I was thinking something along the lines of this:
>> http://www.chadjoan.com/d/dmd.2.058/html/d/phobos/std_format.html
>>
>> I figure it would probably be easy to get some of the basics 
>> down. More
>> advanced stuff would probably involve messing with terminfo or 
>> <term.h>.
>> Windows' (terribly bad) command prompt can have some of these
>> capabilities implemented too, but in a roundabout way because 
>> Windows
>> defines API functions that need to be called to affect 
>> terminal graphics
>> and coloring. I figure that would require the help of the I/O 
>> routines
>> if I were to work on that.
>>
>> If there's interest, I might take a stab at it.
>>
>> So, would this sort of thing make it in?
>
> I think it would nice to have, but not in std.format. 
> std.terminal or similar would be better.

It would be great if an std.terminal contained general stuff for 
manipulating/querying a terminal portably, as well as colour 
output, eg. get terminal size, move cursor around, erase line... 
just things to help with building UIs, progress bars, etc. that 
are easy to use.