Introduction

plotui renders charts as real pixel graphics inside a terminal — not block characters, not braille approximations — and lets you rotate, pan, and zoom them live. It is built to drop into a Textual app, with the rendering engine written in Rust so it stays fast in 2D and 3D.

from plotui import Plot

plot = Plot()
plot.add_line(xs, ys, name="forecast")     # 2D: axes/ticks/legend appear
plot.add_line(xs, costs, axis="y2")        # independent right-hand axis
plot.add_scatter3d(xs, ys, zs)             # any 3D trace -> orbit camera
plot.add_line3d(xs, ys, zs)                # 3D trajectory/curve
plot.add_surface3d(xs, ys, Z)              # grid surface, viridis by default

The one rule

The Rust core owns pixels, not the terminal. The engine has no event loop and no input handling — your TUI framework owns the loop, forwards input to the camera, and asks for a frame:

f64 data ─▶ camera + rasterizer ─▶ RGBA buffer ─▶ kitty escape bytes ─▶ your terminal

Because the core and the protocol layer are pure and I/O-free, the same engine can back every frontend — and be unit-tested by hashing pixel buffers.

What works today

• 2D — line, scatter, and bar charts with automatic axes, ticks, and a legend; up to two independent right-hand y-axes; a hover crosshair with a value readout.
• 3D — scatter clouds, node-link graphs with hover/click picking, polylines, and Gouraud-shaded grid surfaces with viridis/plasma colormaps — all under one orbit camera.
• Textual widget — PlotWidget picks the right render path per terminal, routes mouse and keyboard input to the camera, and repaints without flicker.

Status: early scaffold — APIs may still move. Build from source with maturin; wheels are coming.