textBox

⚠️ This project is an experimental prototype.

It was developed as a focused exploration and is currently on hold. The code is functional in parts but incomplete and not intended for production use.

The repository remains public for learning, reference, and experimentation purposes.

A simple lightweight component to render and edit multi-line text in a flexible way. The textBox automatically adjusts its height to the number of lines, mimicking a flexBox-style behavior. Designed to be modular, easily extendable, and fully integrated with Löve2D and Lua.

Project status

Paused — last active development: December 2025.

Main unresolved topic:

• character deletion cascading across lines while respecting jump boundaries

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✨ Features

• Multi-line editable text
• Automatic line wrapping on spaces (wrap-on-word)
• Dynamic height adjustment (like a FlexBox)
• Basic cursor movement and blinking
• Mouse-based positioning of the cursor
• Support for backspace, delete and enter
• Placeholder text if input is empty
• Lightweight and dependency-free (apart from classic.lua)

Coming soon:

• Hard-wrap on long words (with custom hyphenation logic)
• Word-aware cursor movement (e.g., ctrl+arrow)
• Selection / copy-paste support

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📂 Files Overview

• textBox.lua: Main component
• lineManager.lua: Line-level logic (insertion, deletion, wrapping)
• main.lua: Simple usage example with love.load, love.draw, love.update, etc.

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⚡ Quick Usage

local TextBox = require("textBox")
local textBox = TextBox(50, 50, 300, 30) -- x, y, width, lineHeight

function love.load()
    textBox.focused = true
end

function love.update(dt)
    textBox:update(dt)
end

function love.draw()
    textBox:draw()
end

function love.keypressed(key)
    textBox:keypressed(key)
end

function love.textinput(t)
    local LineManager = require("lineManager")
    LineManager.addToLines(t, textBox)
    textBox:setCanvas()
end

function love.mousepressed(mx, my, button)
    textBox:mousepressed(mx, my, button)
end

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🔎 Design Notes

• The text is stored in a lines array.
• Each insertion or deletion triggers a check for whether the line needs to wrap.
• Wrapping currently works only on spaces (not in the middle of a word).
• Cursor position is tracked with a line and col index.
• LineManager is responsible for splitting/merging lines and adjusting cursor.

Custom hard-wrap (cutting a word) is not yet implemented but will use a rule-based hyphenation system (e.g., only inserting a special character like —, to allow safe undo).

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🌍 License

Copyleft © 2025 Franz Bonaparta (aka Jojopov) Released under the GNU GPLv3 or later. See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/ for full terms.

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🚀 Credits & Shoutouts

This project is part of the TurtleTech collection: A suite of small, Lua-based UI and game components built with a hacker/maker mindset.

Feel free to fork, contribute, or repurpose the component in your Löve2D projects.

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“Write here… then write your own world.”

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            🐢 TurtleTech · Crafted in Lua 🍕

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