Skip to content

Terminal Interface

The Terminal UI (TUI) is Baboon's original interface - a beautiful, efficient way to practice typing right in your terminal.

Terminal Typing Screen

Technology

The TUI is built with the excellent Charm libraries:

  • Bubble Tea - The Elm-inspired TUI framework
  • Lipgloss - CSS-like styling for terminals
  • Harmonica - Spring physics for smooth animations

Block Letter Font

Words are displayed using a custom 6-line tall font built from Unicode block characters:

Character Usage
█ Full block (solid areas)
▀ Upper half block (rounded tops)
▄ Lower half block (rounded bottoms)

This creates smooth, readable letters even in a terminal:

    ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄  █████▄  █████▄  ▄█████  ▄█████  █     █
    █     ▄▀  █    █  █    █  █    █  █    █  █▄    █
    █████▀    █████▀  █████▀  █    █  █    █  █ ▀▄  █
    █    ▀▄   █    █  █    █  █    █  █    █  █   ▀▄█
    █████▀▀   █████▀  █████▀  ▀█████  ▀█████  █     █

The font supports:

  • Lowercase letters a-z
  • Punctuation: , . ; : ! ?
  • Unknown characters render as spaces

Colour Scheme

The TUI uses 256-colour mode for rich visual feedback:

Element Colour Code Description
Correct letter 10 Bright green
Incorrect letter 9 Bright red
Untyped letter 8 Gray
Title 14 Cyan
Labels 7 Light gray
Values 15 White
New best star 226 Yellow

Gradient Colours

The WPM bar and statistics bars use a gradient from red to green:

196 → 202 → 208 → 214 → 220 → 226 → 190 → 154 → 118 → 82 → 46 → 47

When you press space to advance to the next word, a smooth animation plays:

  1. Previous word fades in above with animated greyscale opacity
  2. Current word slides up with spring physics
  3. Next word fades in from below

Animation parameters:

  • Frame rate: 60 FPS
  • Spring frequency: 6.0
  • Spring damping: 0.5
  • Stagger delay: 3 frames

Layout

Typing Screen

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                      │
│                     previous                         │ ← Dimmed
│                                                      │
│     ██████ ██   ██ ██████ ██████ ███████ ██   ██     │
│     ██     ██   ██ ██   █ ██   █ ██      ████ ██     │ ← Current
│     ██     ██   ██ ██████ ██████ █████   ██ ████     │    word
│     ██     ██   ██ ██ ██  ██ ██  ██      ██  ███     │
│     ██████ ███████ ██  ██ ██  ██ ███████ ██   ██     │
│                                                      │
│                      ▼ next ▼                        │ ← Dimmed
│                       word2                          │
│                       word3                          │
│                                                      │
│     Word 15/30                                       │
│                                                      │
│     ▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂░░░░░░░░░░░░░░   52 WPM      │
│     0              60              120               │
│                                                      │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Results Screen

The results screen displays statistics with animated slide-in:

  • Each row slides in from the right
  • 50ms interval between frames
  • 3-frame stagger between rows
  • 25 total animated rows

Running the Terminal UI

Combined Mode (Default)

baboon

Runs backend and frontend together in one process.

Server/Client Mode

For running the backend separately (useful for multiple sessions):

# Terminal 1: Start server
baboon -server

# Terminal 2: Connect client
baboon -client

With Punctuation

baboon -p

Words will have random punctuation between them.

Keyboard Controls

Key Action
a-z Type the next character
Backspace Remove last typed character
Space Advance to next word
Enter Start new round (results screen)
Esc or Ctrl+C Exit

Terminal Requirements

  • 256-colour support - Most modern terminals work
  • Unicode support - For block characters
  • Minimum width: ~80 columns
  • Minimum height: ~24 rows

Recommended terminals:

  • Linux: kitty, Alacritty, GNOME Terminal
  • macOS: iTerm2, kitty, Terminal.app
  • Windows: Windows Terminal, ConEmu

Fullscreen Mode

Baboon uses tea.WithAltScreen() for fullscreen mode:

  • Enters alternate screen buffer on start
  • Restores original screen on exit
  • No scrollback pollution

Next Steps