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A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

jacobzelko.com

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Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#31

Post by asciimov »

ekianjo wrote: post #19
asciimov wrote: post #16

A good alternative to strictly terminal-based workflows are tiled window managers. The big gain is that you don't have to give up all those gui apps as they blend in next to the terminal apps quite well.

Tiled windows managers have issues though. Last time I tried i3wm for example, there was no default support for sleep, energy saving and hardware keyboard shortcuts and you had to take care of all of that instead of the usual GNOME/KDE to do it for you. The best option is to install tiled windows managers plugins within GNOME or KDE on Linux.

I use dwm, you get keybinding support inside the config file and then you can use scripts or commands to manage everything else.

Dwm isn't for everybody, you modify the c source and compile to get the changes you want. The best part is that the source is small enough to understand for when you want to do something to it.

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#32

Post by konjin »

spekcular wrote: post #6

I tried very hard when I first installed Linux to get into a terminal-based workflow, mainly by creating an elaborate vim config. In the end I couldn't do it. I spent a lot of my time at my computer writing LaTeX documents, and for this the ctrl-click capability of a GUI editor is indispensable. That is, the editor brings up the source and compiled file simultaneously, and by ctrl-clicking somewhere in either, I am b…

I use terminal exclusively and my vim config is basically 10 lines. Looking at peoples really complex init scripts is like looking at olympic athletes, cool for relaxation, maybe getting one or two things out of them, but if you're a removalist you really don't need glistening six packs.

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#33

Post by thecedarprince »

Hey everyone! I am the author of the article! If you have any questions, feel free to ping me and I will try to respond in a timely fashion! I intend to always keep this article up to date so feel free to bookmark it for a future reference.

Further, it makes my heart so so happy to see so many people being either inspired, interested, or curious about my workflow! I think the best workflow is the one that works for you. If my article played some part in that, then I am jubilant. Have a wonderful day!

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#34

Post by shepherdjerred »

nuclearnice1 wrote: post #9
spekcular wrote: post #6

I tried very hard when I first installed Linux to get into a terminal-based workflow, mainly by creating an elaborate vim config. In the end I couldn't do it. I spent a lot of my time at my computer writing LaTeX documents, and for this the ctrl-click capability of a GUI editor is indispensable. That is, the editor brings up the source and compiled file simultaneously, and by ctrl-clicking somewhere in either, I am b…

What GUI do you use for that Latex editing experience?

I think [TexPad](https://www.texpad.com/) has this feature. It's my favorite LaTeX editor.

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#35

Post by thecedarprince »

snicker7 wrote: post #13

At risk of being /that guy/, I find that emacs gives me a nice & consistent "one-stop-shop" for text-based apps instead of having to kludge together a bunch disparate terminal programs. Also, +1 for Julia.

Thanks! I love Julia - if you want to check out a cool Julia project I am working on with my friend [Ole Kröger](https://opensourc.es/about/) have a look at [Javis.jl](https://github.com/Wikunia/Javis.jl). It is an animation package similar to manim by 3blue1brown. :)

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#36

Post by thecedarprince »

kody wrote: post #12

Very nice! I've tried to switch over to a terminal-based workflow but Qt Creator, VS Code, and Firefox for Atlassian products have been the main holdouts for me. I can't see myself moving away from Qt Creator, but I would kill for an ncurses app for editing Confluence pages and reviewing pull requests without 1200ms between every. single. click. At the very least this article has given me the itch to dust off the old…

Thanks for the kind words kody! Hopefully my linked dotfiles in the article can help out with that. :)

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#37

Post by thecedarprince »

tomcat27 wrote: post #11

why do you prefer writing in terminal based editor?

Author of the article here! For me, I prefer it for two reasons:

1. Distractionless editing - not fiddling with formatting or things like that is quite nice. Especially since I work with markdown and LaTeX, it is easy to convert over to a word file once I get the draft of the version done thanks to pandoc. From there, then I can really worry about the formatting - if I need to as pandoc is great!

2. I like the speed and lightness of a text editor for writing. Don't have to wait for boot, can easily grep and replace, and jump to where I need to go.

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#39

Post by disposedtrolley »

anta40 wrote: post #38

A Mac user here, who use iTerm and Terminal for daily work. I just installed Alacritty. How do I open new tabs?

I don’t think it has tabs —- you might need to have a look at Tmux and handling tabs/split panes using that.

It’s 100% worth learning though. Tmux is available almost everywhere and it’s an easy way to increase your productivity!

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#40

Post by desmap »

thecedarprince wrote: post #33

Hey everyone! I am the author of the article! If you have any questions, feel free to ping me and I will try to respond in a timely fashion! I intend to always keep this article up to date so feel free to bookmark it for a future reference. Further, it makes my heart so so happy to see so many people being either inspired, interested, or curious about my workflow! I think the best workflow is the one that works for y…

I switched to this setup years ago and I regret all the decades before I've spent with GUIs.

One question though, how do I get the floating terminals?

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