a more fully-featured print...

[sgbeal]

Here's a variation of Terminal.print which accepts arrays of arguments, and each argument may be a jQuery element, a function (it is run to get its contents), or "anything else" (anything handled by jQuery.append()).

This could certainly be improved upon, but this seems to work okay...

print: function() {
        var prpush = arguments.callee.prpush;
        var pr = arguments.callee.pr;
        var self = this;
        if( ! prpush );
        {
            prpush = arguments.callee.prpush = function(jout,item) {
                if( item instanceof Function ) item = item();
                jout.append(item);
            }
            pr = arguments.callee.pr = function(obj) {
                jQuery(self.config.selectDisplay).append(obj);
                self.jumpToBottom();
            }

        }
        var out = jQuery('<p>');
        if(! arguments.length) {
            pr(out);
            return;
        }
        var av = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 0);
        var i = 0;
        for( ; i<av.length; ++i ) {
            prpush( out, av[i] );
            if( i != (av.length-1) ) prpush(out, ' ');
        }
        pr(out);
},

[sgbeal]

Sorry, forgot to mention that the above code doesn't use '#display' directly, but uses self.config.selectDisplay (which is "#display" for xkcd). My local copy of cli.js uses
config options for the selectors:

config: {

...
selectScreen: '#screen',
selectDisplay: '#display',
selectPrompt: '#prompt',
selectCursor: '#cursor',
selectInLine: '#inputline',
selectBottomLine: '#bottomline',
selectSpinner: '#spinner',
selectLCommand: '#lcommand',
selectRCommand: '#rcommand'
},

though they should arguably be structured like:

config:{ ... select:{screen:'#screen',...} }

[chromakode]

Nice! One question though... why are you storing the helper functions in arguments.callee instead of using closures?

I also like the move to parameterized element selectors, though I think we could make the names shorter by making them named like "config.el.screen"...

Could you please start pushing your local changes to a repository? That would make it a lot easier to merge them in.

[sgbeal]

i stuff then in callee because it saves memory, rather than re-creating the functions for each instance. i've refactored my local copy to use config.select.screen (etc), by the way.

i'll be happy to push, but i am a complete git newbie (i'm used to cvs/svn/fossil). i'm afraid that some of my current changes might break your code, so i will send it to you for approval/test before i commit. (Or how can i start a branch?)

[chromakode]

In git, each user can have their own independent repository, so you can push and maintain your own version of the tree. I can then pick and choose pieces to merge in to mine.

It's really easy to set one up -- just head over to http://github.com/repositories/new and follow the instructions.

[sgbeal]

okay, i've set up http://github.com/sgbeal/xkcdfools. i'll get my changes into there and let you know.

[chromakode]

Great! I'll be watching for it.