If you want more Emacs examples, Org-mode and Spacemacs (especially in Evil-mode) have a ton of functionality
Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?
11–20 of 299 posts
Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?
#12https://github.com/jonas/tig is one of the first things I install on a new dev machine. It's a really nice UI for staging files or hunks. Since it's just a companion to the git CLI, it feels much more focused than full-blown git GUIs, and doesn't do anything magical.
Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?
#13In stark contrast to most GNU/*nix tools, I really liked MS-DOS's edit.com text editor. Unlike emacs or vim or even nano, it didn't have a bunch of invisible shortcut keys, just a Windows-like drop-down menu system (but rendered in DOS). You could easily browse through the menu hierarchy, but still memorize certain shortcuts that you often use (just like Windows). In later versions you could even use the mouse to sel…
> Unlike emacs or vim or even nano, it didn't have a bunch of invisible shortcut keys, just a Windows-like drop-down menu system (but rendered in DOS).
You might like "joe", which was inspired by WordStar: https://joe-editor.sourceforge.io/>
Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?
#14It's hard to not mention ColorForth here as a primarily-text-based UI, although it ran in graphical mode and did its own text rendering. There were a few language-based innovations that tied closely in to the UI, including the use of color tags on pre-tokenized source code to both select display color, but also to select semantic category of the symbol (e.g. execute at compile time like a macro, execute at run time like a function call, define a new symbol). Probably more interesting is its use of a modified dvorak keyboard layout (later with qwerty support as well), with a consistent onscreen display of the keyboard mapping, indicating what each press will do at any time. I can see this concept generalizing to something like vi where the key-to-meaning mapping is equally dynamic and modal. Lots of other info at https://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/cf-humin... and elsewhere.
Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?
#15As someone who writes software for moderately boring business operations, I've been wondering making terminal-based apps with lots of keyboard shortcuts would lead to a more productive end user than writing a web app.
I've been looking at https://github.com/gui-cs/Terminal.Gui but haven't tried it yet.
Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?
#16The "htop" app, an alternative to the conventional "top," is a nice example of a TUI: https://htop.dev/>
Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?
#17Well you have the MS-DOS era Borland tools.
Someone took the time to rewrite it as a cross-platform open source library: https://github.com/magiblot/tvision
Edit: Not a rewrite, but a port. See comments below.
Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?
#18QuickBASIC or even Visual Basic 1 immediately come to mind. They have good, discoverable navigation and documentation.
I have no idea where you'd be able to find it since it's a proprietary product but InfoLease 9 had one of my favorites TUIs from a long gone era. You could navigate through and edit complicated contract information extremely quickly through a series of fixed number based menus and views. Once I got the hang of it I could blaze through entering tons and tons of data without any effort. I suppose a lot of BBSes had a kind-of similar interface but without the field validation and documentation (you could write ? virtually anywhere to get quick documentation about what you were editing or what something was intended for, and fields were validated in this really "perfect" way where it never felt like you lost time if you fat-fingered something).
Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?
#19In stark contrast to most GNU/*nix tools, I really liked MS-DOS's edit.com text editor. Unlike emacs or vim or even nano, it didn't have a bunch of invisible shortcut keys, just a Windows-like drop-down menu system (but rendered in DOS). You could easily browse through the menu hierarchy, but still memorize certain shortcuts that you often use (just like Windows). In later versions you could even use the mouse to sel…
Not only that, I found it much easier to create TUIs on DOS than on a UN*X system. I still have a hard time with curses. Zortech c on DOS had a small set of screen functions, disp_*(). These are enhanced printf(), scanf(), getc() type functions by adding cursor positioning on an 80x25 screen. Pretty basic but you could create nice applications with these basic functions in Zortech c. Granted, on DOS the screen size d…
> I still have a hard time with curses.
FWIW, _everybody_ has a hard time with curses. That's why it's (aptly) named "curses!"
Re: Ask HN: Interesting TUIs (text user interfaces), maybe forgotten ones?
#20These certainly aren't forgotten, but I like:
* `ranger` file manager: https://ranger.github.io/
* `ncdu` for visualising disk usage: https://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu
* `htop` process monitor: https://htop.dev/
I just find them very intuitive, and information-dense while not being overwhelming.