Meep.Tech.ANSI

ANSI Text Styling and Formatting helpers, extensions, and constants for C#. Used to color and stylize strings for terminal and console output using ANSI text escapes.

Styling Features

This library uses ANSI escape codes and whitespace to enable easy and simple styling of text output for many standard consoles and terminals.

Colors

Colors can be applied to either the foreground or background of text using the [Add]Color and [Add]Bg methods respectively. Arguments for color can be provided in two ways: As a Simple Color or RGB Color.

Simple Colors (3/4-bit)

The ANSI.Color and ANSI.Bg enums provides access to the standard list of 3 and 4-bit ANSI colors. These list include the bright versions of each standard color as well as 0 to use as a Reset Code.

RGB Colors (24-bit)

24-bit ANSI RGB colors can be built using the ANSI.RGB struct. This struct provides a constructor that each take three byte values for Red, Green, and Blue respectively in order to produce the 24-bit RGB color value. The struct definition also includes several static pre-defined colors and helper methods to lighten, darken, and adjust them.

Backgrounds

Background colors can be applied to text using the [Add]Bg methods. These methods take a color argument and apply the color to the background of the text. You can also use the ANSI.Bg enum with any method that accepts a color argument to apply a background color instead of a foreground color.

Effects

Various ANSI text effects are provided by the ANSI.Effect enum. These effects can be applied to text using the [Add]Effect method.

Indents

The ANSI.Indent, ANSI.Dedent, and ANSI.Undent methods can be used to apply and remove indentation from text. These methods are useful for applying uniform indentation to multiline blocks of text.

Methods and Properties

Text Styling Methods

All stylization functions are available statically via the ANSI class or as extension methods for string types (via the ANSIStringExtensions class).

Note: Some methods in the ANSI class are prefixed with Add, while the matching extension methods are named without the prefix.

Ex: ANSI.AddColor vs "text".Color

Method	Description
[Add]Color	Used to apply a 'foreground' color to the text characters themselves.
[Add]Bg	Used to apply a 'background' color to highlight the terminal behind the text.
[Add]Effect	Used to apply a text effect to the text characters.
Stylize/Style	Used to apply color, bg, and effects all at once.)
Clear/Strip	Used to clear all text styling from the text.
Reset	Used to reset the text style to the terminal default.
Indent	Used to apply an indentation to some potentially-multiline text.
Dedent	Used to remove an indentation from some potentially-multiline text.
Undent	Used to remove all indentation from some potentially-multiline text.
Bold	Used to apply a bold effect to the text.
Italic	Used to apply an italic effect to the text.
Underline	Used to apply an underline effect to the text.

RGB Color Helper Members

Method	Description
Lighten	Used to lighten a color by a given %
Darken	Used to darken a color by a given %.
Lighter	Used to lighten a color by 20%.
Darker	Used to darken a color by 20%.
Dimmer	Used to dim a color by 50%.
Brighter	Used to brighten a color 50%
Mix	Used to blend two colors together. (Statically accessible via RGB.Lerp)
Random	Used to generate a random color on the fly.

Usage Examples

using Meep.Tech.Text;

// Apply a color to text
var redText = "This text is red".Color(ANSI.Color.Red);
Console.WriteLine(redText);

Testing

Tests are contained within a seperate .Net C# Project named Meep.Tech.ANSI.Tests within the /tests directory. This project uses the testing framework: xUnit.

TODO

• Publish to NuGet
• Add Features:
  • Support for 8-bit ANSI Colors via the RGB struct's constructor
  • Conversion between 24, 8, and 4 bit colors
• Add Tests:
  • Styling
    • Color
    • Bg
    • Effect
    • Color + Bg
    • Color + Bg + Effect
  • Reset
  • Clear
  • Dedent
  • Undent
  • RGB Color Helper Members