51–60 of 267 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about the fact that your computer now has three enormous copies of chromium on it for no good reason?
How many copies of unix (partitions, vms, containers) do you have on your computer?
So, for one Javascript-written terminal app, you can install a full Linux system with X and a window manager 10 times (Hyperterm.app is 122 MB).
The folks who make HyperTerm might have something to say about your product naming... http://www.hilgraeve.com/hyperterminal/ Edit: I'm surprised more people in the HN crowd aren't familiar with HyperTerm (Yes that is the name and what everyone called it for many many years) It was bundled with Windows up to 7, and is still used heavily in industrial control areas.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trivial apps depending on 14+ million lines of code is not a good thing. Edit: @michaelmior I think you know what I mean.
I think a good terminal emulator is far from trivial. Edit: I'm not sure I do know what you mean. I agree that building trivial apps in Electron probably doesn't make sense. But my terminal emulator is something I spend most of my day using. If building that on top of 14 million lines of C++ gives me a better piece of software, I'm all for it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about the fact that your computer now has three enormous copies of chromium on it for no good reason?
My Visual Studio Code app is 138MB. On the grand scale of things, I'm not that worried about multiple copies of Chromium.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about the fact that your computer now has three enormous copies of chromium on it for no good reason?
> no good reason. Well thats subjective. I might not be as cool as you but I get my work done using these tools.
Would you recommend this to a beginner? Hilariously I'm actually asking for a friend, I don't have a Mac.
This makes me want to re-implemented "commando" from AUX/MPW (I've never understood why this idea didn't take off). If you don't know, when you typed an ellipsis after a command in AUX or MPW a dialog box would be displayed showing the most popular toggles and options for the command (and allowing graphical file-picking). When you clicked "ok" it would type the command for you, so it made the command line both easier…
What did you lose enthusiasm for? commando or HyperTerm? I've been toying with the idea of a "teaching terminal" for learning the command line as well, and building off of HyperTerm seems like a good approach.
Use the model of something like is common with a lot of MUD clients, all text input occurs in a field at the bottom (look at tinyfugue).
Below that have a set of autocomplete hints. This would be filled in based off of common usage, and knowledge of binaries avialable in the path, knowledge of the command line arguments of common tools (git-prompt.sh is really nice for getting my new-to-git coworkers started, for instance).
This could be wrapped up in the terminal, but needs to be aware of the environment in which it's being executed which moves beyond the purview of most terminal emulators and into the area of the shell itself.
EDIT: Rough ascii art illustration:
+----------------------------------------------------+
| > cat foo.txt |
| Hello, world! |
| |
////////////////////////////////////////////////////
| |
+----------------------------------------------------+
| > ca |
+----------------------------------------------------+
|cat | cac... | cal...| can... | can... | cap... |
+----------------------------------------------------+
You'd want usage statistics on common commands, and you'd need to assemble a database of command line options. Might be able to grab these from man/info pages, but formatting is likely inconsistent. Could at least get started that way. And you'd want to collect the users history to customize it. This'd be equivalent to the hints on many mobile OS keyboards.
I could see this being pulled into the terminal, rather than the shell itself. But it'd still need information about the underlying environment (easy if local, hard if remote).
How do terminal emulators on tablets handle keyboard input? Do any of them offer guided hints?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use two tools daily that are built on Electron and they are great. Not only that, but it's never obvious they run on Electron. I'm curious, what do you hate so much about it?
How about the fact that your computer now has three enormous copies of chromium on it for no good reason?