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XTerm: It's Better Than You Thought

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Re: XTerm: It's Better Than You Thought

#111

Post by rvense »

alanbernstein wrote: post #88
bitwize wrote: post #24

Yeah, I'd say xterm is pretty freakin' awesome. While Hackernews was busy grooming their Alacritty setup and holding drag races between it, iTerm, and whatever bloated terminal Microsoft came up with to see which could cat a huge file the fastest, I've been just using xterm. xterm -- it's the standard terminal emulator. xterm: * actually emulates a terminal and passes a set of compliance tests to determine how VT-com…

What is the practical value in better VT compatibility? I'm not familiar with the history, but I guess this is essentially referring to a standard defined by hardware products from the 1970s? Why is that still relevant?

Same as adhering to any standard? The software you want to run produces VT-compatible output, the terminal consumes that and provides a display.

Re: XTerm: It's Better Than You Thought

#112

Post by ddingus »

bitwize wrote: post #76
ddingus wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the server, actually serves the graphics to the user. Within the context of the X Window System, the server is the body of code responsible for delivering the display to the user viewing it.

> Only the server, actually serves the graphics to the user. The server actually serves the user to the remote client. It's like "you are not the customer, you are the product". The remote program needs to communicate graphically with you, and connects to the X server to do this; therefore, you are not the requester of a resource, you are the resource being served. :)

I like it. Clever, and current context relevant.

Cheers.

Re: XTerm: It's Better Than You Thought

#113

Post by panta »

pjmlp wrote: post #106
enriquto wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you have a modern example? I thought you were despising 80s technology.

UNIX is still busy trying to catch up with 70's world from Parc Place, and apparently the 80's UNIX world is what UNIX aficionados want to stay on. No need for more modern examples.

But what is there for power users today? AFAIK Unix is the only viable option from a very pragmatic point of view. So it's not about being aficionados, it's about being pragmatic.

Re: XTerm: It's Better Than You Thought

#114

Post by panta »

8note wrote: post #107
enriquto wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as much "the command line", but being able to talk to your computer using a human-like language, instead of pointing with your finger like a baby or a monkey. Do you know any computer/user interface that is based on writing what you want to do? (instead of selecting it from a small list of possibilities) The only one that I know is the "primitive" command line.

Siri and alexa? You tell it what to do in pretty darned close to human language

Human-Computer Interfaces have different needs from Human-Human interaction, in particular they need to be unambiguous (which the natural language isn't), very precise and concise. For these reasons Siri and Alexa would be terrible to perform tasks which would be very quick in a shell. Also Siri and Alexa are not local and not privacy respecting.

Re: XTerm: It's Better Than You Thought

#115

Post by checkyoursudo »

enriquto wrote: post #109
8note wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri and alexa? You tell it what to do in pretty darned close to human language

Good answer! (but I prefer typing language with a keyboard, instead of saying it out loud, as I'm not a native English speaker and it feels very unnatural to me). Yet, is it possible to use siri or alexa for all your computing needs? Can you copy files around, convert a few images from tiff to jpg, download, compile and set up a nginx web server, hack a bit the code of the server and recompile, etc.? Because I can do…

I would love the option of being able to tell my computer to do things like this some day.

Re: XTerm: It's Better Than You Thought

#116

Post by getitstraight »

zelly wrote: post #108
znpy wrote: post #51

All these Xorg/X11 problems people complain about... I honestly don't see them. I've been using Xorg in one form or another since 2005-2006 and frankly since we all got automatic configuration and said godbye to Xorg.conf it's been a very very pleasant experience. I've been using both nVidia and intel cards, 1/2/3 monitors (in various arrangement) and network stuff (ssh -X and similar), and a videogame from time to t…

X11 is a keylogger, for one. Network transparency is a vulnerability, not a feature.

Yes, and Wayland is a pile of shit, so what's your point? Xorg has this one problem, Wayland has countless problems.

Xorg is stable and proven for decades; Wayland has been incomplete and buggy for decades.

I don't run Wayland, PulseAudio, DBUS, or SystemDumpsterFire on my system, and don't miss any of them.

I don't run strange binary code on my system either, so keyloggers aren't really a concern.

I find it ironic that people who routinely shovel foreign binary code onto their system (even automatically downloading and installing it, no less) from untrusted and untrustworthy third parties, are so all-fired concerned about these trifling imagined Xorg security problems.

Re: XTerm: It's Better Than You Thought

#117

Post by enriquto »

checkyoursudo wrote: post #115
enriquto wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good answer! (but I prefer typing language with a keyboard, instead of saying it out loud, as I'm not a native English speaker and it feels very unnatural to me). Yet, is it possible to use siri or alexa for all your computing needs? Can you copy files around, convert a few images from tiff to jpg, download, compile and set up a nginx web server, hack a bit the code of the server and recompile, etc.? Because I can do…

I would love the option of being able to tell my computer to do things like this some day.

But you already have this option, it's called "xterm + bash"

Re: XTerm: It's Better Than You Thought

#118

Post by checkyoursudo »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #104

I started using st from suckless and realized that met most of my needs, especially when I learned to use tmux properly. In some ways XTerm is the luxury version compared to st. I don't necessarily recommend st, but it is always interesting to learn that you can get by with a lot less than you thought you could. And it helps you learn some tricks you might not otherwise think you needed.

I use st as well. Honestly, the main reason is that I can configure it to use ligatures, whereas the few that offer ligature support aren't terminals that I prefer, and the terminals I like better don't offer ligature support. So, st it is. Otherwise, it's not the best with regard to overall capabilities (though that is because of my limited ability to write my own original patches for it, I suppose), but it's not the worst either.

I don't especially recommend it either, but I like it a lot for my own use. People who don't know how to patch C on Linux are probably not really going to want to use it with the default config.

Re: XTerm: It's Better Than You Thought

#119

Post by wnoise »

mkesper wrote: post #86
linsomniac wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use xterm because it's one of the only terminal emulators that allows me to disable the alt-screen (titeInhibit). Apparently I'm one of the few, but when I vi/view a file and exit, or read a man page and go back to the command line, I still want to be able to reference what I was just looking at.

Absolutely! I often use cat in tmux instead of less because of this. Will try xterm now, too.

In addition to the sibling comment, tmux has the per-pane option 'alternate-screen'. You can set its default with 'set-option -g alternate-screen off'

Re: XTerm: It's Better Than You Thought

#120

Post by cturner »

chupasaurus wrote: post #90
himujjal wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

never understood whar extra features people need out of a terminal that they are building new ones. heck there are electron based terminals

I use window separation and profiles in Konsole every single day and alarms are handy when needed. I have a 4K display and terminal has it's own virtual desktop, separating a Konsole window into nested tabs is a must to simplify the navigation between tabs since you can switch to other groups by a single hotkey. I use profiles to visually differentiate tabs for different purposes (e.g. ssh to hosts with master and re…

You can get a fair bit of that with terminal multiplexers like tmux. It does not have the ability to style different tabs. But it has advantages too. For example, you can have multiple terms connected to a single tmux session, you can run tmux when ssh’d to a remote server, the tool is not tied to a particular vt.

Not to say your setup is deficient, but I think I understand where the parent is coming from.

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