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VTM: A Text-Based Desktop Environment

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Re: VTM: A Text-Based Desktop Environment

#71

Post by otoburb »

raintrees wrote: post #66

This reminds me of the DOS menuing system we used to install on clients' computers several decades ago. Cannot remember the name, may have to dig out my old 5 1/4" floppy collection binder I used to always carry with me if not remembering starts to drive me crazy... That system remapped the function keys to launch batch files or call up sub-menus... Easiest way (at the time) to "customize" peoples' computers for them…

VDOS/Norton Commander[1] jumps to mind when I read your description, except that was more popular when everybody was migrating to 3.5" floppies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander

Re: VTM: A Text-Based Desktop Environment

#72

Post by naikrovek »

ezoe wrote: post #48
qayxc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only true for TrueType Fonts in graphical mode. In text-mode, characters are "drawn" by simply writing their ASCII code point into VRAM and writing another byte (two 4-bit values really) in an additional "attribute" buffer to set the foreground and background colour. Programmers can swap out the default character set to provide their own typeface and graphical characters for use as window borders, shadows, etc…

Come on. We had long past the ASCII only era.

For people downvoting this guy, he's saying we're long past the ASCII era, and he is NOT saying we're long past the TEXT era.

It's the America-centric ASCII stuff that we're past, not plain text itself.

UTF-8 forever!

Re: VTM: A Text-Based Desktop Environment

#73

Post by Ignacy-s »

EE84M3i wrote: post #36
411111111111111 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, i was specifically confused about him having to use it often. it is sometimes useful, like when you're connected to the demo site and cba to figure out how to disconnect. but such situation are so rare that i was confused about the remark how often he uses it.

I use it pretty often because I have SSH sessions that get messed up from (dis)connecting my VPN and I'm impatient.

If you do the first connection with mosh instead of ssh, it will survive vpn/wifi/4g roaming and even system hibernation. Assuming that first hop is a vps in the cloud with a stable connection, you can literally wake your pc from hibernation and once you get any Internet access, mosh will happily restore your "ssh" session for you.

mosh.org: >Mosh will log the user in via SSH, then start a connection on a UDP port between 60000 and 61000.

Needs at least a couple of ports in that range open, because old sessions tend to block ports until they are cleaned.

Re: VTM: A Text-Based Desktop Environment

#74

Post by ajarmst »

The width of the display used in the screenshot appears to be less than 150 characters. Why would you add the clutter and distraction of transparent windows with frame decorations in such a limited environment? 30% of the real estate is consumed by elements that don't present any information to the user.

On a modern display, this could far more productively be replaced with (1) any number of tiling WMs with console terminals in the panes (I use stumpwm for this), or---and you don't even need a GUI/WM for these---tmux or screen, or even emacs -nw, which give you a much more configurable and robust text-only environment. My normal working environment is a pretty heavily customized tmux (including powerline and full 256-color/unicode support) running on a machine that doesn't even have a GUI installed. (I do cheat a bit by using kmscon---or fbcon in the past---to get colour and font support on linux vttys.).

Re: VTM: A Text-Based Desktop Environment

#75

Post by EE84M3i »

Ignacy-s wrote: post #73
EE84M3i wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it pretty often because I have SSH sessions that get messed up from (dis)connecting my VPN and I'm impatient.

If you do the first connection with mosh instead of ssh, it will survive vpn/wifi/4g roaming and even system hibernation. Assuming that first hop is a vps in the cloud with a stable connection, you can literally wake your pc from hibernation and once you get any Internet access, mosh will happily restore your "ssh" session for you. mosh.org: >Mosh will log the user in via SSH, then start a connection on a UDP port be…

I use mosh for personal stuff. My work does not allow mosh.

Re: VTM: A Text-Based Desktop Environment

#76

Post by chrisseaton »

ajarmst wrote: post #74

The width of the display used in the screenshot appears to be less than 150 characters. Why would you add the clutter and distraction of transparent windows with frame decorations in such a limited environment? 30% of the real estate is consumed by elements that don't present any information to the user. On a modern display, this could far more productively be replaced with (1) any number of tiling WMs with console t…

Things like borders may be empty of content but that doesn’t mean they don’t help you see and understand other content more easily.

Re: VTM: A Text-Based Desktop Environment

#80

Post by ajarmst »

chrisseaton wrote: post #76
ajarmst wrote: post #74

The width of the display used in the screenshot appears to be less than 150 characters. Why would you add the clutter and distraction of transparent windows with frame decorations in such a limited environment? 30% of the real estate is consumed by elements that don't present any information to the user. On a modern display, this could far more productively be replaced with (1) any number of tiling WMs with console t…

Things like borders may be empty of content but that doesn’t mean they don’t help you see and understand other content more easily.

Agreed. But using an entire character-width for that purpose is extravagant in this example (use of background colour would be better. Right now, some of those windows are !0% border). In a larger area, you can use unicode or even the drawing characters in MS 8-bit ASCII for a single-pixel hairline plus padding for both windows' text). I guess my take is that this is sacrificing an awful lot of real-estate to simulate overlapping windows, which is a feature of dubious utility in a pure text environment. "Users expect them" is probably the most common and egregious excuse for bad UX design, but I do understand why.
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