Simplify simple template

[joshka]

This will flow through to the async template too once the various issues here are resolved.

[joshka]

I wonder whether this should be simplified further, to a point where it doesn't have the counter code. This way it would make a useful first step on the counter tutorial.

[joshka]

Where do the comments on this leave us? I suggest this is significantly better than what was there before and should be merged. Are there any comments that are hard blockers @orhun @kdheepak ?

[orhun]

This template still leaves some beginner questions unanswered and might leave the user confused:

• How do you send custom events if needed? This is a common issue.

  • We should consider exposing mpsc::Sender somewhere in the app. Alternatively, we could show how to use send().

• What is color_eyre? I came to use ratatui, but now there's another dependency I need to learn about!

  • We could either remove color_eyre or provide documentation explaining its purpose.

• The ui() function tends to become very long after a while. Perhaps we could move it to a ui.rs file? This might make it easier to locate and search for.

• Why not use a constant for FPS?

[joshka]

How do you send custom events if needed? This is a common issue.

In the simple template, you don't. Put another way, the simple template should be a good template for basing the tutorials on. I'd actually like to remove the counter code and make it just a hello world instead. That way our hello world quick start tutorial becomes:

1. install cargo generate
2. cargo generate ratatui/templates
3. cargo run

What is color_eyre? I came to use ratatui, but now there's another dependency I need to learn about!

We do document this, in the second counter tutorial, in https://ratatui.rs/recipes/apps/color-eyre/, in https://github.com/ratatui/ratatui/blob/main/examples/README.md#design-choices (documenting why we use this in all the examples). Additionally hovering over the color_eyre line shows a decent message that answers the question. Including color-eyre in the default template is an opinionated default. It's there because the value it adds when something fails outweighs any downsides.

I'll move everything under simple/template and add a readme to this to help.

The ui() function tends to become very long after a while. Perhaps we could move it to a ui.rs file? This might make it easier to locate and search for.

I have a strong (evidence based) opinion against pre-emptively organizing a project into horizontal layers. Having worked on many projects small and large, horizontal segmentation leads to poorer long term maintainability for a variety of reasons. Doing this would be pre-emptive. Put another way, if I was using the simple template personally, having the extra file would be an annoyance that I'd always want to revert. Reverting would be annoying. Refactoring in the other direction is fairly simple though - highlight code, extract to module, done.

Why not use a constant for FPS?

6ba914b

[joshka]

Moved the template under simple/template so that we can have a readme for the template and a generated readme for the template user.

Added documentation for color-eyre, fixed up the readme outline of the files, added github workflows and dependabot settings.

Removed cargo.lock as it will get out of sync pretty quickly and running cargo on the generated source will effectively update to the latest immediately.

[orhun]

I'm not sure adding GitHub workflows to the templates. It might increase complexity, especially for new users who would need to understand what those 100 lines of opinionated YAML is doing, how to use GitHub Actions, etc. Additionally, it's not directly related to the context of TUIs as well. Personally, I’d find it annoying and would likely delete the .github folder before starting to work on the template. Thoughts? @kdheepak @joshka

[joshka]

This is a template, stored on github to create an application. Generating github workflows to ensure that the project builds well is a useful thing to do. Anyone using GitHub should have a basic understanding of github workflows, which are well documented.

The "opinionated" parts of these are fairly insignificant and the sort that I wonder why you'd delete. They just check formatting, check clippy lints, check docs, and run any tests. These are basic hygiene things for any rust project.

Given that deleting these is a matter of deleting a single file, and that this generally makes any project better, I'm for leaving these in.

[kdheepak]

I made a couple of minor comments but it looks good to me overall.

[orhun]

The "opinionated" parts of these are fairly insignificant and the sort that I wonder why you'd delete. They just check formatting, check clippy lints, check docs, and run any tests. These are basic hygiene things for any rust project.

It just felt a bit too much for a simple project creation, that's all. But yes, I agree with your point that the user can just delete them, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

[joshka]

Let's KISS on this template, and move the more opinionated ideas about event handling, threads, etc. to another more advanced template that documents them well.

[joshka]

Merging this to be able to rewrite the getting started docs.

[orhun]

Sounds good, thanks for your work on this 👍🏼