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Building Rich Terminal Dashboards

willmcgugan.com

21–30 of 123 posts

Re: Building Rich Terminal Dashboards

#21
post #17

The future repeats the past. This looks much like the back-end systems I used to design on TurboPascal in the late 1980s / early 1990s. https://ilyabirman.net/meanwhile/pictures/tp-80.png

I miss the simplicity and utility of textual UIs. Nothing unneeded, and everything you need. No filler. No giant gaps between elements or wasted pixels. No fads which do silly things like hide scrollbars or other interactive elements. Except for CAD applications and some games, almost everything we do online today could be accomplished via textual UI. Almost the entire internet could be replaced with TUIs and a lot o…

Where's lynx when you need it? [0]

[0] https://lynx.browser.org/

And I might add, it's the oldest web browser still being maintained. Since 1992.

Re: Building Rich Terminal Dashboards

#22

It seems like Python and Node are not good choices for command line tools. Rust or Go make a lot more sense as your end users won’t have to install any libs or package managers. Single binary distribution ftw.

pip is installed by default on mac and linux. For non posix experienced users, pip installing packages is actually easier than figuring out how to put a binary on the path. Not to mention, updates are just a command, you dont have to go find the url, redownload, and replace the binary.

I thought macOS stopped shipping with python

Re: Building Rich Terminal Dashboards

#24
post #17

The future repeats the past. This looks much like the back-end systems I used to design on TurboPascal in the late 1980s / early 1990s. https://ilyabirman.net/meanwhile/pictures/tp-80.png

Terminals are a really solid front-end interface if you can get by the inherent tradeoffs.

Re: Building Rich Terminal Dashboards

#25
post #5

Does anyone know of a similar library for node which does this? I've decided to make my next app TUI first, and then only add in a GUI much later, but I haven't seen anything that looks nearly as good as rich.

Ink may be the tool you're looking for.

https://vadimdemedes.com/posts/ink-3

It lets you write React CLI apps using a flexbox layout engine, and is used by a number of high-profile node projects.

Re: Building Rich Terminal Dashboards

#26

It seems like Python and Node are not good choices for command line tools. Rust or Go make a lot more sense as your end users won’t have to install any libs or package managers. Single binary distribution ftw.

Except you can bake apps into a single stand-alone binary executable for both Node.JS[1] and Python[2] [1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/pkg [2] https://github.com/marcelotduarte/cx_Freeze

Can’t you just shebang a python script to make it feel like a normal executable?

Re: Building Rich Terminal Dashboards

#27
post #17

The future repeats the past. This looks much like the back-end systems I used to design on TurboPascal in the late 1980s / early 1990s. https://ilyabirman.net/meanwhile/pictures/tp-80.png

I wouldn't say it repeats it. These new programs are similar to the old ones in much the same way that new books are similar to old books. The medium is the same but what's being expressed and accomplished is vastly different. Two specific categories that come to mind: these new programs are vastly easier to use with modern UI principles than "RTFM" you'd find in the old ones; and validation/error handling is similarly much simpler.

It's reinventing the wheel, but a car tire is a welcome improvement to a wooden wagon wheel.

Re: Building Rich Terminal Dashboards

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you can bake apps into a single stand-alone binary executable for both Node.JS[1] and Python[2] [1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/pkg [2] https://github.com/marcelotduarte/cx_Freeze

Can’t you just shebang a python script to make it feel like a normal executable?

Sure but you can't shebang all of the deps... Unless your `normal executable` embeds a Python dependency-manager.
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