Any examples of modern apps with rich terminal GUI?
Writing Programs with Ncurses
21–30 of 93 posts
Re: Writing Programs with Ncurses
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wanted to hear this. This had been my experience too. But no one on the net seem to talk about it. It was always "we are stuck with mainframe due to politics..." But this isn't about mainframe vs Java. I have a feeling it's about Terminal user interface vs GUI. A modern terminal app, will be just as much fast as those old mainframe apps, is my feeling.
Mainframes do have a more sensible way to build a TUI than something like curses. A 3270 TUI is very similar to using html forms. The fields are named, have attributes, validation, and a so on. The mainframe sends the form, the user interacts with the form, and nothing is sent back to the server until either a field validation is needed or the "Enter" key is pressed. More detail: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pd…
Few things would make me as happy as the Django admin module ported to a TUI. In the mainframe days, how much did application developers need to worry about the displayed field length, or was that handled by the OS?
Re: Writing Programs with Ncurses
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wanted to hear this. This had been my experience too. But no one on the net seem to talk about it. It was always "we are stuck with mainframe due to politics..." But this isn't about mainframe vs Java. I have a feeling it's about Terminal user interface vs GUI. A modern terminal app, will be just as much fast as those old mainframe apps, is my feeling.
Mainframes do have a more sensible way to build a TUI than something like curses. A 3270 TUI is very similar to using html forms. The fields are named, have attributes, validation, and a so on. The mainframe sends the form, the user interacts with the form, and nothing is sent back to the server until either a field validation is needed or the "Enter" key is pressed. More detail: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pd…
That approach is good enough for simple forms ala HTML, but it's not effective for the sorts of full-featured TUI's with character-based graphics, drop-down menus, widgets, panes/windows etc. that are expected nowadays. Even writing a simple interactive text editor would be problematic using that model.
Re: Writing Programs with Ncurses
#24One really nice thing about ncurses (which I used in python to make an email user agent) —- you can run ncurses apps in an ssh session.
Re: Writing Programs with Ncurses
#25The "n" in "ncurses" is for new. Its not so new any more ;)
Re: Writing Programs with Ncurses
#26That's funny, I had this tab open this weekend while I was trying to make a silly terminal game, where each sprite is an ncurses window. I didn't really make much progress, but got the physics and sprite drawing working.
Re: Writing Programs with Ncurses
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mainframes do have a more sensible way to build a TUI than something like curses. A 3270 TUI is very similar to using html forms. The fields are named, have attributes, validation, and a so on. The mainframe sends the form, the user interacts with the form, and nothing is sent back to the server until either a field validation is needed or the "Enter" key is pressed. More detail: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pd…
That approach is good enough for simple forms ala HTML, but it's not effective for the sorts of full-featured TUI's with character-based graphics, drop-down menus, widgets, panes/windows etc. that are expected nowadays. Even writing a simple interactive text editor would be problematic using that model.
You can do all that as well. Screenshot of a fairly complex 3270 TUI: https://davideellis.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/1-samplee327...
Or a video, skip forward to about 8:00 https://higherlogicdownload.s3.amazonaws.com/IMWUC/UploadedI...
Re: Writing Programs with Ncurses
#28Plain old HTML + forms can go a long way when accessed through the Lynx or w3 web browsers. I think the first time I encountered a system where this was the preferred path was in Kannel [0].
https://kannel.org/download/1.4.5/userguide-1.4.5/userguide....
Re: Writing Programs with Ncurses
#29I can't access the site... Access Denied - Sucuri Website Firewall Block reason: Access from your Country was disabled by the administrator. In case someone else experience the same and wants an alternate link: http://web.archive.org/web/20210531163620/https://invisible-...
I don't know why that WAF is in front of it, but there seems to be an intentionally maintained mirror that doesn't have the Securi headers: https://invisible-mirror.net/ So, the mirrored copy of this article would be: https://invisible-mirror.net/ncurses/ncurses-intro.html
> Block reason: Access from your Country was disabled by the administrator.
Thanks for that mirror, I occasionally use the lynx web browser that is also hosted there and being blocked has always been a problem.
Re: Writing Programs with Ncurses
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wanted to hear this. This had been my experience too. But no one on the net seem to talk about it. It was always "we are stuck with mainframe due to politics..." But this isn't about mainframe vs Java. I have a feeling it's about Terminal user interface vs GUI. A modern terminal app, will be just as much fast as those old mainframe apps, is my feeling.
I don't think it is exactly TUI vs GUI, but more keyboard-first vs mouse-first, i.e. how you interact with it. Granted, Desktop GUI are usually developed mouse-first, but it doesn't have to be that way: if you take windows 98 / windows 2000, you could get everything done more efficiently with a keyboard than with a mouse. Just think about the difference between an app developed specifically for the desktop (mouse) or…
Right.
Plus responsiveness. Terminal apps have faster response time than GUIs. And when someone is typing like 10 chars per seconds it matters.
The usecase is different between terminal vs GUI. Where in GUI you look - choose - decide and click. And in terminal you blindly storm on the keyboard as fast as you can.