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Waveterm

waveterm.dev

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Re: Waveterm

#21

Post by rogual »

First time I saw an idea like this was with termkit [1], which I thought was great and was sad to see it didn't get continued development.

I really feel like we overlook the ways in which we limit ourselves by having our CLI interfaces be tied to a thing that emulates a terminal from the 80s.

The composability, scriptability, history, etc. of CLIs is great, but why should that preclude us from being able to quickly show a PNG or graph a function?

Maybe it's an idea whose time has come.

[1] https://github.com/unconed/TermKit

Re: Waveterm

#22

Post by sime2009 »

rogual wrote: post #21

First time I saw an idea like this was with termkit [1], which I thought was great and was sad to see it didn't get continued development. I really feel like we overlook the ways in which we limit ourselves by having our CLI interfaces be tied to a thing that emulates a terminal from the 80s. The composability, scriptability, history, etc. of CLIs is great, but why should that preclude us from being able to quickly s…

TermKit was one of the inspirations for Extraterm ( https://extraterm.org/ ). It separates command output, allows for reuse of previous output, as well mixing content types.

The terminal VSCode has been picking up on these kinds of features lately. Now they can even "sticky" the previous command line at the top of the window when scrolling through long output.

It has taken a long time, but these ideas are slowing spreading around.

Re: Waveterm

#23

Post by JimDabell »

Looking at the screenshots, I find it really difficult to parse. Maybe if they simplified the prompt a bit it would be easier, but my focus is bouncing all around the screenshots trying to find the prompt. You’re typing in the centre of the screen not the left because of all that junk? What is the point in having status in the prompt if you control the window chrome and can put that status in a more convenient place?

It’s also kinda weird how they try to add styling everywhere possible… except remove the styling from the output of ls so you can’t distinguish between file vs directory, executable vs non-executable, symlink vs regular file, etc.

I really don’t understand what they are getting at with the copy either:

> The modern terminal that keeps your flow in line

> Keep development moving forward without the copy, pasting, saving, and exporting headache.

What copy, pasting, saving, and exporting headache are they talking about?

Re: Waveterm

#24

Post by markstos »

hahn-kev wrote: post #20
zokier wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's buried in the FAQ: > In the future we may launch cloud features to support terminal sharing, shared workspaces, shared playbooks, and terminal backup/sync. Presumably these cloud features will come with a subscription. But yeah, the VC backing combined with no solid business model makes me wary. It seems unlikely that the community will be super excited to start building integrations and extensions here to benef…

"Shared playbooks" so like scripts? Isn't that just scripts?

Maybe. Playbook is also the precise word Ansible uses to describe automating tasks across multiple servers in their particular way. So it could be a hint about Ansible-like features.

Re: Waveterm

#26

Post by FridgeSeal »

k4runa wrote: post #14

Something about this design make it seem more like a chat interface to the terminal, and after using ChatGPT the idea of chatting to a raw computer terminal instead of one way commands seems so obvious... the future interface for everything looks more and more like it's just going to be chat based, or like a Jupyter notebook, and that seems amazing to me... because it's getting us ready for voice-based computing like…

> voice-based computing like Star Trek.

It sure if you’re remembering most of Star Trek very well, the crew evidently, and demonstrably does more work on their consoles, which have actual UI’s.

Can you imagine trying to navigate to a sub directory and run a binary but your LLM-assistant has decided that it thinks you want to search for the file name on the web? And you can’t just do it yourself, because they’ve taken away the actual tools from you.

I think I’d actually go and become a goat-farmer at that point.

Re: Waveterm

#27

Post by FridgeSeal »

But like…why?

At the risk of being “HN talks about rsync on the Dropbox thread” what’s this offering that can’t already do, for free, without a EULA, and inevitable VC-enshittification risk?

> ditch vim for quick updates

Bruh, have you seen the average vim user? They’re about the fastest people on a computer I’ve seen in my life. This is not exactly a convincing argument.

> Render code, images, markdown, and CSV files without ever leaving the terminal.

So like, bat/cat/any number of other tools that already exist, and dont require me to run a whole web-browser to operate?

I just, don’t get the appeal, and I’m so curious as who is the target market for this? Are there armies of devs out there who are like “please, I wish my terminal was actually a web browser with a EULA, pls build a product for me!”??

Re: Waveterm

#29

Post by FridgeSeal »

rogual wrote: post #21

First time I saw an idea like this was with termkit [1], which I thought was great and was sad to see it didn't get continued development. I really feel like we overlook the ways in which we limit ourselves by having our CLI interfaces be tied to a thing that emulates a terminal from the 80s. The composability, scriptability, history, etc. of CLIs is great, but why should that preclude us from being able to quickly s…

Terminal interfaces are devs due for an upgrade, but this doesn’t feel like a genuine solution to that, this feels like just try to pollute CLI land with the web-tech everyone already complains about.

Re: Waveterm

#30

Post by elcomet »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #27

But like…why? At the risk of being “HN talks about rsync on the Dropbox thread” what’s this offering that can’t already do, for free, without a EULA, and inevitable VC-enshittification risk? > ditch vim for quick updates Bruh, have you seen the average vim user? They’re about the fastest people on a computer I’ve seen in my life. This is not exactly a convincing argument. > Render code, images, markdown, and CSV file…

> They’re about the fastest people on a computer I’ve seen in my life.

I've seen plenty of people using vim that seemed fast (as in plenty of keys pressed, screens changed, etc), and thought they were fast but actually were pretty slow compared to some vs code users. I don't think the app makes a huge difference, rather the mentality to improve your workflow and be more efficient.

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