Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

acko.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 208 posts

Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#161

Post by alavrik »

notaddicted wrote: post #152
Tycho wrote: post #96

I find Unix usability standards generally pretty insane. Funny he should post this, as on the train today I was thinking of making a program I'd call 'SmartTerm' or something which would basically be a more usable, graphically augmented terminal for beginners (or people who just can't stand interfaces which depend on memorization and patience). Some things I find nuts about the current terminal is OS X (at least the…

I've always wished the terminal would be upside down, so that new typing would happen at the top. Then you could put a bunch of descriptive info in the title bar and still wouldn't have to move the eyes much.

This is why I placed my xterm title bar at the bottom and it works like a charm.

Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#162

Post by gbog »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #75
unconed wrote: post #21

Earlier 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…

My local editor is vim in a terminal. :) It seems like TermKit could handle curses applications fairly straightforwardly and without modifying those applications. Just set TERM=xterm, and when you see the xterm initialization string, either open a new tab or define a region in the existing tab, and emulate an xterm within that region. (If you use a region in the existing tab, it could have a control attached to it th…

> I'd like to use this like an enhanced standard terminal

Same here. Just adding a tiny little bit of enhancement without changing anything in the standard behavior could be a bettter idea. Examples:

  - ls output is pure text but hoverable (parent's idea)
  - add a way to see thumbnails of pics in ls
  - drag and drop files in the pwd
In the article the author says "The interaction is strictly limited to a linear flow of keystrokes, always directed at only one process" and take it as a limitation. From my point of view, when doing geek work on big machines, I need to drive a "linear flow of keystroke" in the machine. It is the way to have a deterministic behavior. It is the way to be able to script my work. I feel empowered by the control I have on what the machine does. Everything else (ie Windows, Mac UI) feel like a console game to me, in the sense that I give away my full control on the machine in exchange of impressive graphics, ease of interaction and safety-for-kids.

Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#163

Post by gbog »

mcs wrote: post #153
JoshTriplett wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My local editor is vim in a terminal. :) It seems like TermKit could handle curses applications fairly straightforwardly and without modifying those applications. Just set TERM=xterm, and when you see the xterm initialization string, either open a new tab or define a region in the existing tab, and emulate an xterm within that region. (If you use a region in the existing tab, it could have a control attached to it th…

I agree with this. Where I work, everybody has linux development machines, but use their machine of choice as their actual workstation. This either forces people to use vim/emacs through SSH, or set up some local file sharing so that they can use their bloated eclipse thing. Personally, I've spent months each with a few of the popular editors around, and I fall back on vim just because my .vimrc has been tuned so muc…

> highlighting text in a split view vim selected only text in that window

Try to control-select in the terminal. Works with my Gnome term 2.

> vim/emacs through SSH

We work like that too, and I see only advantages to this set-up, the least being forcing everyone to learn find, grep, vim. These powerful tools increase productivity but have a high barrier of entry, so best is to have no other choice.

Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#164

Post by rbranson »

sehugg wrote: post #156
rbranson wrote: post #106

This will replace the terminal as much as the microwave replaced metal over fire for cooking or as much as synthesizers replaced real instruments in music.

Have you listened to the radio recently? ;)

Off and on in the car, but that's irrelevant. I'm not claiming every technology is irreplaceable, but that not all evolutions or supposed improvements of technologies REPLACE their predecessors.

Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#165

Post by robryan »

stcredzero wrote: post #84
roqetman wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is amusing how we hackers, who are supposed to embrace change, become as Luddite as anyone else when our sacred tools are questioned. In my experience, programmers as a whole are actually more luddite and irrationally reactionary than the general populace.

Yeah, just look at the Rails/CoffeeScript thing recently.

Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#167

Post by Sudarshan »

l3vitat3 wrote: post #137
wooster wrote: post #117

This comment thread, both here and on the blog post, is the best example of stop energy being directed at forward motion I've seen in a long, long time: http://www.userland.com/whatIsStopEnergy Kudos to unconed for doing something remarkable. I look forward to seeing where it goes from here.

that's just a marketing site talking about a marketing term probably invented by a marketing guy, I'm okay if this gets as widespread as apple devices (and btw I really love my macbook pro) but I find it totally useless for the people working day by day with terminals, time will have the last word

Think of this as empowering people who will not use vi or emacs, but prefer Eclipse or Visual Studio, to have a visually appealing arsenal of tools which can be chained in a pipelined fashion.

What is wrong with that? Yahoo pipes for example provided pointy clickety interface to mashing up data. Lot of people used it to do useful work.

It really does not matter if a even single sysadmin who already uses the shell does not start using this. It just needs to have its OWN users that is all. If you just consider ALL Eclipse users + ALL Visual Studio users, that is a HUGE user base... Now the vi/emacs user may feel superior to the others...

but in reality anyone in this world can have their own reasons to create products and use various tools. All the best to the author of this tool for taking the pain to code this...

If it works out and gains users... awesome... else it shows we still find Old tools useful. We have not stopped using Fire or Wheels today though they very OLD technologies. Whether the shell is as important as fire or wheels OR transitionary like Hydrogen blimps or something in between only time will tell...

Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#168

Post by comex »

unconed wrote: post #21
telemachos wrote: post #18

After seeing something about this yesterday, I said on Rstat.us/Twitter that I thought it was pretty but disagreed with the whole premise. I still do, I think, but I'm very impressed with how reasonable Steven's response was. He wrote me and asked pretty much "Why?" I said essentially "Unix philosophy" and attached the link that ended up in his blog post.[1] He wrote back and at some point he wrote this post, probabl…

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…

> - No scripting language... except the whole thing is built on Node.js... :) [...] Basically, for scripting, I think the command line is a shitty place for it, and we should just switch to using a real language in its own little console when needed.

I could see this being done well-- it's not hard to beat bash for syntax and functionality-- but I could also see it being done poorly or considered an ancillary feature.

Shell scripting sucks, but it's the only language I know that lets me write tiny little scripts in not minutes but seconds, inline, without breaking out of the flow. Just like dynamic versus static languages, the quantitative difference in writing speed is enough to make a qualitative difference in the types of programs that can be written; and the difference between a non-scriptable shell and a scriptable one is like the difference between a GUI and a good CLI.

A large part of that scriptability is just grep and sed and friends, which TermKit apparently does support, but sometimes bash's loop structures are also required...

Just my two cents.

Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#169

Post by joe_the_user »

I like the overall idea a lot and am working on something vaguely related (though more like Quicksilver/Gnome-do).

I doubt that a modern approach is going to be able to satisfy the entire historical legacy of the Unix terminal and it probably shouldn't. Everyone who's happy running vi in an ordinary terminal should probably continue to do so.

Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#170

Post by unconed »

philjackson wrote: post #71

I really think Steven went about marketing this in the wrong way. It really should have been dubbed as a terminal alternative . By calling it a replacement he's just inviting a mass of critique which focuses on what it lacks rather than what it offers over an xterm.

I really doubt that would have changed people's reaction. Besides, to be taken seriously, I have to believe that TermKit can eventually be a fully functional replacement.

As for being hard to try and not at a useful stage yet... hey, that's not my problem. I wasn't the one who upvoted it all over the internets :).

Post reply on HN