DrawHelper

A utility class for safe and bounded terminal drawing using a local coordinate system.

Supports sub-regions, colors, and drawing of text, boxes, and lines.

Constructor

  DrawHelper(screen, x: int, y: int, width: int, height: int)

• screen: curses window to draw on.

• x, y: Top-left corner of the region in parent coordinates.

• width, height: Size of the drawing region.

Color

• set_color(color_pair: int)

Set the active color pair for subsequent drawing.

Drawing Primitives

• put_char(x: int, y: int, char: str, attrs=0)

Draw a single character at (x, y) within bounds.

• put_string(x: int, y: int, text: str, attrs=0)

Draw a string at (x, y), clamped to fit the width.

• `draw_line(x: int, y: int, length: int, char: str,

horizontal=True, attrs=0, ender=None)`

Draw a horizontal or vertical line using the given character.

Optional ender is placed at both ends.

• filled_rectangle(x: int, y: int, width: int, height: int, char: str = ' ')

Draw a filled rectangle using the given character.

• rectangle(x: int, y: int, width: int, height: int)

Draw an outlined rectangle using Unicode box-drawing characters.

Text Utilities

• multiline_text(x: int, y: int, text: str) -> int

Render multiline text starting at (x, y).

Returns the number of lines drawn.

• header_line(y: int, text: str, char: str = '─', attrs=0)

Draw a horizontal line with centered text at row y.

• `info_line(row: int, start: int, end: int,

strings: List[str], margin=1, attrs=0)`

Display a pipe-separated list of strings between start and end at row.

Region Management

• sub_region(x: int, y: int, width: int, height: int)

Context manager that yields a nested DrawHelper with its own local coordinates.

    with helper.sub_region(x, y, w, h) as sub:
        sub.put_string(0, 0, "Inside sub-region")

Notes

• Coordinates are relative to the helper’s own region.

• Drawing outside bounds is silently ignored.

• Drawing operations use safe wrappers to suppress curses.error.