Turbo Vision is a character-mode

text user interface In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI) (alternately terminal user interfaces, to reflect a dependence upon the properties of computer terminals and not just text), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an ear ...

framework included with Borland Pascal,

Turbo Pascal Turbo Pascal is a software development system that includes a compiler and an integrated development environment (IDE) for the programming language Pascal (programming language), Pascal running on the operating systems CP/M, CP/M-86, and MS-DOS. ...

, and

Borland C++ Borland C++ was a C and C++ IDE (integrated development environment) released by Borland for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. It was the successor to Turbo C++ and included a better debugger, the Turbo Debugger, which was written in protected mo ...

circa 1990. It was used by Borland itself to write the

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

s (IDE) for these

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

s. By default, Turbo Vision applications replicate the look and feel of these IDEs, including edit controls,

list box A list box is a graphical control element that allows the user to select one or more items from a list contained within a static, multiple line text box. The user clicks inside the box on an item to select it, sometimes in combination with the ...

es, check boxes,

radio button A radio button or option button is a graphical control element that allows the user to choose only one of a predefined set of mutually exclusive options. The singular property of a radio button makes it distinct from checkboxes, where the user ...

s and menus, all of which have built-in mouse support. Later it was deprecated in favor of Object Windows Library, the Win16 API, and the GUI tools of Borland Delphi. Around 1997, the C++ version, including

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

, was released by Borland into the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...

Tvision
''"What about copyrights? ..According to a FAQ entry in the Borland's site (was in http://www.inprise.com/devsupport/bcppbuilder/faq/QNA906.html when I saw it) the code is public domain. I also asked in the Borland's newsgroup and the TeamB people (not official people but they are who give technical support in the net) said me the FAQ was right."''Turbo Vision - by Borland Developer Support Staff
on community.borland.com/ ''"Question: Where can I find the public domain version of Turbo Vision? Answer: It can be found at ftp.inprise.com/pub/borlandcpp/devsupport/archive/turbovision/"'' (1998, archived) and is currently being ported and developed by an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

community on

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service founded by Geoffrey B. Jeffery, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hosting open-source soft ...

under the

GPL license The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

. An older update of the Borland code by Sergio Sigala is available under the

BSD license BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lic ...

. The Pascal version, which was distributed alongside Borland Pascal 7 on a "bonus" disk, was never released under a

free software license A free-software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but the rights-holder (usually the author) ...

, so the

Free Pascal Free Pascal Compiler (FPC) is a compiler for the closely related programming-language dialects Pascal and Object Pascal. It is free software released under the GNU General Public License, witexception clausesthat allow static linking against it ...

project recreated its own version by

backporting Backporting is the action of taking parts from a newer version of a software system or software component and porting them to an older version of the same software. It forms part of the maintenance step in a software development process, and ...

a clone made by Leon de Boer that ran in graphical mode back to textmode. The result is called ''Free Vision''. Over the years this codebase has grown stable on nearly all operating systems and architectures that FPC supports. The textmode IDE is very close to the original TP environment, with built-in compiler and IDE much closer than e.g. RHIDE, and supporting functionality like

code folding Code or text folding, or less commonly holophrasting, is a feature of some graphical user interfaces that allows the user to selectively hide ("fold") or display ("unfold") parts of a document. This allows the user to manage large amounts of text ...

Unicode support

One of the factors limiting Turbo Vision's popularity was the absence of

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

support in the original Borland version. As of October 2020, there are Unicode versions for C++ and Free Pascal.

Third-party implementations

Applications using Turbo Vision

* Dos Navigator * IBM Handshaker * SET Edtor * RHIDE * OSPlus Text editor * TMBasic * NE (NO

EDLIN Edlin is a line editor, and the only text editor provided with early versions of IBM PC DOS, MS-DOS and OS/2. Although superseded in MS-DOS 5.0 and later by the full-screen MS-DOS Editor, and by Notepad in Microsoft Windows, it continued to b ...

) * EditV * IDA (DOS version) * turbo (text editor) * tvterm (terminal emulator)

References

External links

Free Vision
- Free Pascal's implementation of Turbo Vision
TVision website

"Sigala's version"

A lookalike implementation for Java
{{Authority control Text user interface libraries Conio Pascal (programming language) libraries Borland software Public-domain software with source code

Unicode support

Third-party implementations

Applications using Turbo Vision

See also

References

External links