INTRODUCTION

TUI-Vision

Starting in 2025, I made the previously private project public after successfully porting the Turbo Vision C++ framework to Perl for the target platform Windows 10 and 11 (after two failed attempts, see commits history for details).

Installation and Usage

The port can be installed via CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network). Simply run the following command:

cpan install TurboVision

A simple example to create an application with Turbo Vision in Perl:

use TUI::App;

my $app = TApplication->new();
$app->run();

Key Features of TUI-Vision

Compatibility

The port supports 32-bit and 64-bit Strawberry Perl versions >= 5.10 and covers a wide range of Windows systems (Please note that not all combinations of Windows versions and Perl versions could be checked by me).

User Interfaces

All original user interface elements such as edit fields, list boxes, checkboxes, radio buttons, and menus are available in Perl and offer full mouse support (in the future, so please don't be angry that this is in progress; see Coverage).

Extensibility

A Moo/s/e based toolkit was used to ensure that the applications remain efficient and portable. The toolkit enables developers to extend the functionality of TUI-Vision easily and efficiently. The UNIVERSAL::Object package (by default), Moo, Moos and Moose are currently supported.

Moo and Moose are widely used libraries with a well-known API. It is important to note that Moo and Moose are not required as prerequisites! The default toolkit and Moos is compatible for our API and implemented in pure Perl.

It's up to you what you want to use. Simply use Moo in your application, instead of use TUI::toolkit if you want to use Moo. TUI-Vision will then use Moo in its entirety (the same applies to Moose and Moos, of course).

Documentation and Support

Detailed documentation and examples can be found in the CPAN or GitHub repository of this port.

Please note that this is a very recent version of the port of the Turbo Vision C++ framework to Perl. Although I have done my best to create a stable and functional version, there may still be bugs and instabilities.

However, I do my best to answer questions and bug fixes quickly and reliably. Your feedback is extremely valuable to continuously improve the quality and stability of this port. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any problems or questions. For this use the GitHub issue tracker and the Github discussion channel.

I hope this port will facilitate the development of text-based applications in Perl on Windows systems and look forward to feedback and contributions from the developer community.

Copyright and License

Copyright (c) 1990-1994, 1997 by Borland International

Copyright (c) 2021-2026 the AUTHORS and CONTRIBUTORS as listed in the sources.

This software is licensed under the MIT license (see the LICENSE file, which is part of the distribution).