# gansm/finalcut

A Modern C++ Text-Based Widget Toolkit (TUI)

Repository: https://github.com/gansm/finalcut
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/finalcut
Homepage: https://github.com/gansm/finalcut/wiki/Getting-Started#getting-started-with-the-final-cut-widget-toolkit
Language: C++
License: LGPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: dialog, widget-toolkit, termcap, terminal, tui, console, tty, library, framework, text-mode-gui, c-plus-plus, object-oriented, terminal-app, text, user-interface, widget, cpp, cpp14, text-ui, finalcut-tui
Last push: 2026-08-19T22:01:03+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 67/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 98, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4140, "days_push": 14, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1199, forks 60 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:57.919851+00:00)

## What it is
FINAL CUT is a lightweight C++ widget toolkit for building text-based user interface (TUI) terminal applications with its own windowing system, requiring no external libraries like ncurses. It offers a Qt-inspired object-oriented class design with widgets such as dialogs, buttons, menus, input fields, and list boxes, plus mouse support and full Unicode/UTF-8 handling.

## Use cases
- build a terminal user interface in C++
- create text-mode console applications with windows and dialogs
- write a TUI app without depending on ncurses
- add menus, buttons, and input fields to a terminal program
- build a cross-platform Unix terminal GUI toolkit app
- render Unicode and full-width characters in a text UI

## When to choose
- you want a self-contained C++ TUI library with no ncurses/termbox dependency
- you prefer a Qt-like object-oriented widget API
- you need full Unicode, UTF-8, and mouse support in the terminal
- you target multiple Unix-like platforms including BSD and macOS

## When to avoid
- you need a graphical (non-terminal) GUI
- you are not programming in C++
- you want a TUI toolkit for Python, Rust, or another language
- you need a very large ecosystem of third-party widgets and examples

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: ui-components, terminal-ui, gui
- domain: developer-tools, cross-platform
- platform: bsd, cpp, cross-platform, cli
- tags: tui, widget-toolkit, text-user-interface, termcap, unicode, console-applications, qt-inspired, command-line, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- gansm/finalcut (main) score 67

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:57.919851+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T06:20:53.154295+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/gansm/finalcut (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:57.919851+00:00, sha 358ed7e09e08)
  - homepage: https://github.com/gansm/finalcut/wiki/Getting-Started#getting-started-with-the-final-cut-widget-toolkit (fetched 2026-08-29T12:28:07.855582+00:00, sha 76833a172f71)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.