Boxes Development

This means that the planned functionality is implemented and working. Development will thus slow down and concentrate on the implementation of changes and upgrades desired by the users - you! - and, in the event of undocumented behavior (bugs), on the fixing of the same.

Great care has been taken to make the boxes source as compatible as possible with all kinds of different platforms.

Please do make suggestions for improvement and do not hesitate to email the author about your questions.

Change Log

Bug Reports

• the output of "ident boxes" (if there is any),
• the name and date/time of the archive you downloaded, and
• the input which caused the crash.

Known Issues

• Mending a box changes its overall indentation if the text inside the box is centered. (Reported by boxes user rubikitch on 2007-10-12)
  Boxes cannot tell from the input text if the text inside the box was already indented from the start or if what appears to be indentation is caused by the text having been centered. So, in order to resolve this, boxes would have to rely on command line arguments passed when mending (like -a c).
  Patches welcome. (Click for details.)

  $ echo foo | boxes  -a c -s 10 -d shell
  ##########
  #  foo   #
  ##########
  $ echo foo | boxes  -a c -s 10 -d shell | boxes -a c -s 10 -m
   ##########
   #  foo   #
   ##########
  $ echo foo | boxes  -a c -s 10 -d shell | boxes -a c -s 10 -m | boxes -a c -s 10 -m
    ##########
    #  foo   #
    ##########
  $ echo foo | boxes -s 10 -d shell
  ##########
  # foo    #
  ##########
  $ echo foo | boxes  -s 10 -d shell | boxes  -s 10 -m
  ##########
  # foo    #
  ##########

Wish List

• Support colored boxes! :-) ANSI escapes (e.g. color codes) should be possible in shape definitions, similar to tcsh or bash prompts. This would not be difficult to do, because the actual work is left to the box designer who needs to put all the codes in. (submitted by myself on Sun, 28 May 2000)
  Forecast: not likely, since some of the other items are more pressing (see below)

• Ability to tolerate text added around a box:

      /***************/   /* text added */
      /*   the box   */
      /***************/

  It should still be possible to remove the box despite the added text, and the added text should be preserved. (submitted by Zdenek Sekera on Thu, 23 Mar 2000)
  Forecast: I'd like to have it, but requires a lot of work, so will take time

• Ability to integrate input text into the box frame (submitted by Tobias Buchal on Thu, 13 Jan 2000)

      Orginal Text:
          file:line
          test text text
          test text text
  
      Desired Output:
          |---(file:line)------     <-- this line must currently be done manually
          |test text text
          |test text text
          |--------------------

  Forecast: Quite likely. If any new features should be implemented, this one might be next. In the meantime, the effect can be achieved by using editor mappings.

• Ability to use more than one config file. Provide include statement or read ~/.boxes also after reading the global config file. (first submitted by Tobias Buchal <buchal41@che41a0.der.edf.fr> on Fri, 5 Nov 1999)
  Forecast: Somewhat likely, but probably no include statement. The problem is that the parser cannot easily be reset in this case.

• Create vim syntax file for boxes config files. This is hard. My current try works fine except for the problems mentioned at the top of the file. Any help would be greatly appreciated! (screenshot big-250K, small-90K)
  Forecast: I'm stuck, but I'd like to have it

• Support unlimited line lengths, as all GNU tools do
  Forecast: not likely, because it's no limitation in everyday use of the program

• Support multi-byte character sets such as UTF-8 and Unicode. (submitted by David Karafiát on Sat, 28 Jun 2008)
  Forecast: This would be the most pressing feature request, as more and more text files use multi-byte character sets. It would also take a lot of work, so much time may pass before it gets implemented

  ---

• Provide option -c str for simple regional comments. This would make some config file box design definitions unnecessary, such as "vim", "pound", "java", etc. (submitted by Johannes Zellner)
  Forecast: Done! It's in version 1.1.

• Provide options --help and -? for consistency with other Linux/UNIX programs. The new options should trigger the usage information just like -h used to do. (submitted by Raphael Wimmer on Mon, 28 Aug 2006)
  Forecast: Done! It's in the current snap.