Question

I am looking for an embeddable interactive console. I want the user to be able to type in some custom commands, and the application to write command responses in it. Would be awesome if it would understand powershell or python, ans supports command completion.

I already built my own bash-like terminal, but I do not want to totally reinvent the wheel, so I’m looking for a third-party stable component before going any further with it.

If someone is interested, I found PoshConsole, a powershell console:
http://poshconsole.codeplex.com/

Thanks

PS: you can find a screen of what I am trying to achieve here:
http://www.hiboox.fr/go/images-100/codein,0a2809b63e05c3d0cac678962e0e3d5a.jpg.html

Answer 1

Nothing found since I asked the question, and to stick with the "do it yourself" way of thinking:

I wrote a terminal-like control in .NET.

http://wpfterminal.codeplex.com/

You can see an example in this screenshot (terminal is integrated in a bigger project) :
http://images4.hiboox.com/images/4210/0a2809b63e05c3d0cac678962e0e3d5a.jpg

Basic mechanisms

Actually what I did was to define a lastPromptIndex integer, and everytime a user presses the ENTER key and a new prompt appears, this value is updated.

After that, it’s simple, you just need to process any text input before the textbox validates the input. If the textbox caret was located before your lastPromptIndex, you need to raise an error (usually a beep sound) and you must invalidate the text input, so nothing is written in the textbox. I also automatically set the caret position to the end of the textbox, so the user can immediatly input some text.

Extensions

You can enable command completion by looking for an "UP key" input if the caret is before the prompt index, etc. What you need is just to process input events before they are sent to the textbox internal mechanisms. I don’t know if SWT controls allow it, but I’m pretty sure they do, like any serious UI system.