>monospace text just doesn't cut it anymore
Maybe in your terminal world, but not mine buddy.
TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement
51–60 of 208 posts
Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement
#52This a cool project, albeit not my cup of tea. Sure, the terminals out there need a little work, but I'm skeptical about bringing too much of the "gui world" in.
There are, however, some concepts that are worth copying and that are in fact doable in current terminal environments. What I would like to see is more innovation in the world of console programs. There are lots of things to do in terms of auto-completion, navigation and integration etc.
Take a look at ranger [1] and sup [2] for examples of new neat console applications.
Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement
#53It's a pity that this is so difficult to try. The blog post has so much detail and effort put into it, but all that shine and polish disappears when you try to install it.
Specifically Step 1 of the instructions[1] has a link titled "install node and npm" [2] which has the line 'git clone git://github.com/ry/node.git', which is incorrect. The correct URL (as far as I can tell) would be 'git://github.com/joyent/node.git'.
In addition the linked instructions say nothing of npm, which can be installed quite easily by running 'curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh' as root.
Back to the TermKit instructions again, and step 5 says 'git clone git@github.com:unconed/TermKit.git --recursive', which didn't work for me. What worked was 'git clone git://github.com/unconed/TermKit.git --recursive'.
Finally after all that, I just see 'You cannot use this version of the application TermKit.app with this version of Mac OS X.'. Would have been nice to mention that at the start.
[1]: https://github.com/unconed/TermKit [2]: http://howtonode.org/how-to-install-nodejs
Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
To address some of your concerns: - Monospace fonts for code is definitely in. Try catting a .js file, it will get syntax highlighted. Most likely, it doesn't recognize the mime type of your file. It's using the old mime.types DB + some custom additions... also, the highlighter I'm using only has so many languages defined. I looked for the most comprehensive / least fail one. - Regarding vim... I admit I just don't l…
And on another note... it's been hilarious how people have been questioning my professional credentials just because I want to make something more usable. I've implemented over a dozen RFCs, can match regexps with the best of them and do know which end of a pipe does what ;).
It is amusing how we hackers, who are supposed to embrace change, become as Luddite as anyone else when our sacred tools are questioned. Personally I see room for this and a whole lot more. I'd like to see an amalgam of this and the traditional terminal (easy way to pull up a traditional terminal if you need it). There is no need to "replace"; I think this makes a fine addition to a hackers workspace.
Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement
#55one word: genius!
Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement
#56The first thing to realise is that the existing UNIX data processing tools deal fall into two categories - those that process (including generate or consume) an ordered sequence of text records (eg. sort, comm, uniq, awk, sed, grep, tr, cut, find, xargs, ls...) , and those that process arbitrary binary data (cat, dd). Most fall into the first category.
Now, while it might make sense to use a better interchange format than "newline-separated text" for those ordered text records, I don't think that adding other arbitrary data types is particularly useful, unless a way can be found to make these arbitrary data types self-describing. This is because there's little to no commonality in the types of processing that you do on different data types: the article shows the example of "cat termkit.png", but what does it mean to concatenate two images ("cat foo.png bar.gif"), or concatenate an image with a text file? Making some assumptions, we can certainly define arguably useful semantics for those, but what does it mean to "sort" an image?
And how do we write "cat" to deal sensibly with currently unknown data types, that will be defined in the future?
Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement
#57This a cool project, albeit not my cup of tea. Sure, the terminals out there need a little work, but I'm skeptical about bringing too much of the "gui world" in. There are, however, some concepts that are worth copying and that are in fact doable in current terminal environments. What I would like to see is more innovation in the world of console programs. There are lots of things to do in terms of auto-completion, n…
"Notmuch is an answer to Sup. Sup is a very good email program written by William Morgan (and others) and is the direct inspiration for Notmuch. Notmuch began as an effort to rewrite performance-critical pieces of Sup in C rather than ruby. From there, it grew into a separate project. One significant contribution Notmuch makes compared to Sup is the separation of the indexer/searcher from the user interface."
Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement
#58It's a pity that this is so difficult to try. The blog post has so much detail and effort put into it, but all that shine and polish disappears when you try to install it. Specifically Step 1 of the instructions[1] has a link titled "install node and npm" [2] which has the line 'git clone git://github.com/ry/node.git', which is incorrect. The correct URL (as far as I can tell) would be 'git://github.com/joyent/node.g…
Fyi, I think the current recommendation is to install both node and npm as a regular user.
I generally follow the pattern described here for node: http://blog.nodejs.org/2011/04/04/development-environment/. If you do that, and then install npm as you describe (but as a regular user), then npm will automatically be installed under the node installation.
Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm also a bit disappointed on how most people here react. I personally think your idea is great and pretty futuristic. I would certainly use a tool like this. Also it's open source so if a specific detail (such as the font) bugs them it can simply be changed. I've had similar ideas (based on Python) but never got around to executing them. Keep up the good work and don't let the angry bearded UNIX dinosaurs get to yo…
Regarding your quote problem: the idea is that the highlighted token signifies "quoted string". I plan to add regexp tokens, user@host tokens, etc. each with appropriate autocomplete. I thought the current minimalistic approach was ok, but it might be worth to add subtle quotes around the edges to reinforce the idea. That's why it's made out of HTML/CSS...
The token idea is genius. This could be applied to programming languages as well. Why settle with crazy delimiters like ',"; /xxx/ and manual escaping with \n \x \\\\\\ (making a \ in a regexp in a string :P). A subtle visual hint could be enough to distinguish different kinds of textual "object".
Sure, not everyone will like this, but for people that are visually oriented like me it will make things a lot of fun.
Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement
#60Post about TermKit: http://axisofeval.blogspot.com/2011/05/termkit.html