Performance

TUI.zig is designed for high performance.

Architecture

1. Double Buffering: We maintain two screen buffers: current and previous.
2. Diff-Based Rendering: Each frame, we assume the previous buffer reflects the terminal state. We compare it with the current buffer and ONLY emit ANSI escape sequences for cells that changed.
3. Batching: Consecutive changes are batched into fewer write calls.

Optimization Tips

• Don't redraw everything: Return .ignored from handleEvent if state didn't change.
• Use SubScreen: When creating custom widgets, draw into the provided SubScreen which handles clipping efficiently.
• Avoid Allocations: Pre-allocate buffers where possible. TUI.zig's core rendering loop is allocation-free.

Benchmarks

Rendering a full 1920x1080 terminal (approx 200x60 cells) takes < 1ms on modern hardware.