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Show HN: Shox: A customisable status bar for your terminal

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Re: Show HN: Shox: A customisable status bar for your terminal

#41

Post by t0astbread »

ohithereyou wrote: post #31
t0astbread wrote: post #20

I only had a quick glance at the source code and my Go is terrible so forgive me if I've misunderstood something. But am I right in the assumption that this includes a proxy that acts as a sort of "middleware" layer for the terminal without explicit support from either the shell or the terminal? If so, this might have a lot more potential than it seems. Imagine how much you could do with "terminal middleware"!

Terminal middleware already exists - screen and tmux seem to be the most popular here.

Tmux could be seen as an example of "terminal middleware" but I mean a more general solution.

Imagine you had a framework that lets you write scripts to intercept and modify I/O from programs running in a shell. You could have password managers that automatically (or semi-automatically) answer sudo prompts. Or filters that censor certain strings (if you're live streaming coding sessions this could be very useful) before they appear on screen.

Another useful "terminal middleware" layer could be pre-processing commands before (or after) the shell parses them. You could wrap every command in a `script -c` invocation in order to capture the output so that you can later re-use it without having to redo the processing. (This is probably my biggest pet peeve with Un*x since it really adds up over time.)

Re: Show HN: Shox: A customisable status bar for your terminal

#42

Post by slightwinder »

colecut wrote: post #7
Kaze404 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I have no need for them

Anyone who would not benefit from tmux must only very rarely use the terminal, or not at all. This isn't a dig at this tool, just a strong endorsement for tmux =)

What's the benefit of tmux when one doesn't work remote and already has a better tilling-wm?

Re: Show HN: Shox: A customisable status bar for your terminal

#43

Post by slightwinder »

Lammy wrote: post #11
thrownaway954 wrote: post #10

again... again... I have to be the jerk here. why is there nothing that shows what this does on the project page? You've spent countless hours creating this thing, yet you can't spend 10 more minutes showing off the capabilities? you have a static PNG image that is confusing at best. create a 15 second animated GIF that shows off your work.

I thought the static PNG was just fine, personally. What would an animated GIF show here, the time changing every 60 seconds? Animated product showcases are just annoying to me because I can't study any particular scene long enough to see everything.

There could be some explanation which part of the static PNG is relevant. Like a an arrow pointing to the bar with some text "Look here". Not everyone knows terminals and shells well enough.

Re: Show HN: Shox: A customisable status bar for your terminal

#44

Post by slightwinder »

So this puts some basic information into every terminal, and there is no way add your own information? Why not use the normal Bar from your windowmanager or desktop environment?

I could understand it if you can personalize the bars per terminal, and show some context-specific informations. Stuff like git-branch, hostname, docker-container or active virtual environment, which usually ends in the prompt and is more of a waste to be located there. But there seems to be no way for scripting this?

Re: Show HN: Shox: A customisable status bar for your terminal

#46

Post by inetknght »

sgn wrote: post #37
inetknght wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`tmux` is directly intended to replace `screen`.

But not for those want to communicate via serial console. Or is there anything was changed?

Ahh, I said such in tongue and cheek. Indeed, I recently had need to communicate via serial console and searching Stackoverflow suggested screen. I tried tmux and... nope.

I ended up using `minicom` instead.

Alas, serial ports are pretty nifty but I get the impression that they are distinctly becoming a lost art

Re: Show HN: Shox: A customisable status bar for your terminal

#47

Post by chaorace »

t0astbread wrote: post #41
ohithereyou wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terminal middleware already exists - screen and tmux seem to be the most popular here.

Tmux could be seen as an example of "terminal middleware" but I mean a more general solution. Imagine you had a framework that lets you write scripts to intercept and modify I/O from programs running in a shell. You could have password managers that automatically (or semi-automatically) answer sudo prompts. Or filters that censor certain strings (if you're live streaming coding sessions this could be very useful) bef…

There's a spectrum of these. There's terminals that have their own modes, like Termite. There's also terminals that have their own scripting/extension frameworks, like hyper.js or secureCRT.

My personal favorite is Emacs. It's the only environment I've ever been able to rig up that's truly, fully hackable. Since terminal output is treated like any other text buffer, I can roll just about any package I like on top without issue.

In particular, this solved my ssh woes. There's no need to reconfigure my terminal dozens of times each day, because all my preferences and tweaks exist on a higher layer.

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