The TTY demystified (2008)

I have read this with interest but the obsessive compulsive developer inside me keeps bothering me with questions like "isn't it worrying/depressing that today's best OS & applications are stuck with interfaces modeled with messy, leaky or no abstraction at all after devices used more than 100 years ago with no opportunity for radical improvement in sight ?". Sometimes I have the feeling that in software we are building skyscrapers on foundations of mud (usually after I read C code).

Re: The TTY demystified (2008)

#6

Post by digi_owl » Sat, Aug 15, 2015, 11:07 AM UTC

leaveyou wrote: post #5

I have read this with interest but the obsessive compulsive developer inside me keeps bothering me with questions like "isn't it worrying/depressing that today's best OS & applications are stuck with interfaces modeled with messy, leaky or no abstraction at all after devices used more than 100 years ago with no opportunity for radical improvement in sight ?". Sometimes I have the feeling that in software we are build…

At the other end, it allows things like:

http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2015/08/surf...

Re: The TTY demystified (2008)

#7

Post by angdis » Sat, Aug 15, 2015, 11:22 AM UTC

leaveyou wrote: post #5

I have read this with interest but the obsessive compulsive developer inside me keeps bothering me with questions like "isn't it worrying/depressing that today's best OS & applications are stuck with interfaces modeled with messy, leaky or no abstraction at all after devices used more than 100 years ago with no opportunity for radical improvement in sight ?". Sometimes I have the feeling that in software we are build…

OK, but you have to admit it does the job and few (none?) people complain about the limitations of VT100 terminal emulation.

If we could start from scratch what would a contemporary TTY be like? Would it be better in terms of functionality, multi-platform capability? What would be the advantage?

Re: The TTY demystified (2008)

#8

Post by skriticos2 » Sat, Aug 15, 2015, 12:04 PM UTC

angdis wrote: post #7

leaveyou wrote: post #5

I have read this with interest but the obsessive compulsive developer inside me keeps bothering me with questions like "isn't it worrying/depressing that today's best OS & applications are stuck with interfaces modeled with messy, leaky or no abstraction at all after devices used more than 100 years ago with no opportunity for radical improvement in sight ?". Sometimes I have the feeling that in software we are build…

OK, but you have to admit it does the job and few (none?) people complain about the limitations of VT100 terminal emulation. If we could start from scratch what would a contemporary TTY be like? Would it be better in terms of functionality, multi-platform capability? What would be the advantage?

Uniformity and documentation. If you want to do something fancy with the terminal (ncurses like) and try go get into the topic, you'll find a dozen different standards that add bits and peaces with only very cryptic documentation and not much example code. It's quite frustrating.

Re: The TTY demystified (2008)

#9

Post by philh » Sat, Aug 15, 2015, 12:05 PM UTC

angdis wrote: post #7

leaveyou wrote: post #5

I have read this with interest but the obsessive compulsive developer inside me keeps bothering me with questions like "isn't it worrying/depressing that today's best OS & applications are stuck with interfaces modeled with messy, leaky or no abstraction at all after devices used more than 100 years ago with no opportunity for radical improvement in sight ?". Sometimes I have the feeling that in software we are build…

OK, but you have to admit it does the job and few (none?) people complain about the limitations of VT100 terminal emulation. If we could start from scratch what would a contemporary TTY be like? Would it be better in terms of functionality, multi-platform capability? What would be the advantage?

I don't know if it's fair to describe this as a limitation of VT100 (and I haven't RTFA yet), but some things that AFAIK terminals don't get right yet:

- Screen's scrollback buffer and my terminal's scrollback buffer don't know about each other. If I swap screen tabs frequently, my terminal scrollbar becomes useless. OTOH, if I use a tabbed terminal, I'm guessing it would use a different VT100 in each tab and that wouldn't work very well with screen.

- I'd like to be able to drop a marker in my bash prompt, and easily scroll back to the top of the previous command.

- For that matter, I'd like to be able to selectively hide the output of previous commands, and when I want to look at it again I'd like to be able to view it in less instead of just unfolding it in-place.

Re: The TTY demystified (2008)

#10

Post by mikekchar » Sat, Aug 15, 2015, 12:35 PM UTC

philh wrote: post #9

angdis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but you have to admit it does the job and few (none?) people complain about the limitations of VT100 terminal emulation. If we could start from scratch what would a contemporary TTY be like? Would it be better in terms of functionality, multi-platform capability? What would be the advantage?

I don't know if it's fair to describe this as a limitation of VT100 (and I haven't RTFA yet), but some things that AFAIK terminals don't get right yet: - Screen's scrollback buffer and my terminal's scrollback buffer don't know about each other. If I swap screen tabs frequently, my terminal scrollbar becomes useless. OTOH, if I use a tabbed terminal, I'm guessing it would use a different VT100 in each tab and that wo…

Italics. And even worse (because it is more common), bold. Hey, let's throw in "I want to have something bold and italics and this colour".

Possibly I'm rare, but I'm frustrated very frequently...