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State of the Terminal

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Re: State of the Terminal

#141

Post by hnlmorg »

9dev wrote: post #100
dartos wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an effort, but it’s mostly built on cruft (which libraries like ncurses or the projects at charm.sh try abstracting away) Also, what would we use besides escape sequences? They are about as small as can be for what they do. Terminals deal with streams of bytes. They don’t just download entire views and render them (normally.) This normally works to their advantage. There’s also the ansi standard control sequ…

> Terminals deal with streams of bytes. But is this a fundamental constraint, or something we can challenge? Is there any good reason why terminals can't deal with structured data instead? > There’s also the ansi standard control sequences, which imo should have more focus on them as opposed to the terminfo db. Everything in that sentence \033[31;1;4munderlines\033[0m the problem to me: If we didn't need to nest meta…

> But is this a fundamental constraint, or something we can challenge? Is there any good reason why terminals can't deal with structured data instead?

Plenty already do: - Powershell - Murex https://murex.rocks - Elvish https://elv.sh/ - https://ngs-lang.org/

> Applications should neither be concerned with what color codes the output device can render, nor should the terminal itself have to support hundreds of emulation targets.

If you have colour codes (et al) sent out-of-band then you need a new kind of terminal emulator which the application then also needs to support. So you do effectively create yet another standard.

Whereas the status quo, as much as it sucks, is largely just vt100 with a few extra luxuries, some of which are as old as xterm. We aren't really talking about having to deal with hundreds of emulation targets, nor even more than one, in most cases.

Where things get a little more challenging is if you want stuff like squiggly underlines or inlined images. There is the beginnings of some de facto standardisation there but it's still a long way from being standardised.

Re: State of the Terminal

#143

Post by DaSHacka »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #88
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm bewildered that the "user friendly" flavors of linux still use ancient terminals. Do they? I was given to believe that you can use modern Ubuntu/Fedora/OpenSUSE without needing to open a terminal. > If the fact that these distros still lean heavily on terminal use wasn't bad enough, you also need to have a computer intuition from 1985 to feel comfortable using it. At least capitulate to ctrl+v and ctrl+c. Okay,…

Just to get it out of the way - Linux is great if you are a grandma or linux junkie. It sucks for everyone in between, especially for those who come from Windows or MacOS. -- This is the fundamental problem with the terminal, it is extremely powerful when you are intimately familiar with using it. And it's unsurprising that people building distros and maintaining linux fall into that camp. What they are completely bl…

> My gripe is primarily that Linux is _desparetly_ needed now more than ever as an escape from windows.

If all you see Linux as is a crappy free clone of Windows with less user abuse, you'll certainly be left disappointed when it doesn't deliver.

For all their faults, Microsoft pours a ton of money into Windows's usablity and backwards compatibility. If anything, it's impressive Linux DE's come close with a fraction of the funding and organizational structure compared to a literal tech giant.

> But the people who are working on linux distros are so lost in their egos that they are arrogantly trapped in this idea that everyone needs to be driving stick shift in 2024 because look at how much more control you have compared to an automatic, if that analogy makes sense.

Is it really "ego" if the people working on these distros simply like it better this way? Are they wrong for developing the program (oftentimes in their free time) to accomodate the way they, and most people who contribute to the project, enjoy using it?

Sure, it would be great if we could accommodate everyone. But as most FOSS projects are chronically understaffed and underfunded, people prioritize creating a product they can enjoy using.

Re: State of the Terminal

#144

Post by DaSHacka »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #60
fipar wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't disagree with your sentiment I have a few comments: "Why are we still dealing with over half a century of cruft?". IMHO that's because we have software running that's over half a century, with organizations depending on it, and so it needs to continue running. This means we need to continue providing that software with the environment it expects. For over a decade, a significant part of my recurring rev…

> Now that is one hill I'm willing to die on: if someone can't figure out how to extract a tar archive just from looking at the synopsis on the man page and scrolling through the options, unless the archive was maliciously named to hide the fact that it's gzipped or something, I think that person would be a pre-junior developer and still have a way to go to become junior. There’s “let them figure it out” and there’s…

> There is absolutely no reason why, if you provide tar a single .tar or .tar.gz with no other parameters, it doesn’t just say “ok this is a tar/gzip file and you probably want to extract it”.

The default behaviour is being held back from backwards compatibility allowing tar options to be passed as arguments (e.g. `tar xzvf foo.tar` functions the same as `tar -xzvf foo.tar`) though the program could just check if the argument is a valid path to a tar file.

While we're at it though, the most annoying aspect of `tar` has got to be the requiring the `-f` option. I don't see why it's required instead of just taking the first file passed as an argument as the input/output tar file.

Re: State of the Terminal

#145

Post by Workaccount2 »

DaSHacka wrote: post #143
Workaccount2 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to get it out of the way - Linux is great if you are a grandma or linux junkie. It sucks for everyone in between, especially for those who come from Windows or MacOS. -- This is the fundamental problem with the terminal, it is extremely powerful when you are intimately familiar with using it. And it's unsurprising that people building distros and maintaining linux fall into that camp. What they are completely bl…

> My gripe is primarily that Linux is _desparetly_ needed now more than ever as an escape from windows. If all you see Linux as is a crappy free clone of Windows with less user abuse, you'll certainly be left disappointed when it doesn't deliver. For all their faults, Microsoft pours a ton of money into Windows's usablity and backwards compatibility. If anything, it's impressive Linux DE's come close with a fraction…

>Is it really "ego" if the people working on these distros simply like it better this way? Are they wrong for developing the program (oftentimes in their free time) to accomodate the way they, and most people who contribute to the project, enjoy using it?

From Ubuntu's missions statement:

>We believe that bringing free software to the widest audience will empower individuals and communities to innovate, experiment and grow.

I'd say they have been failing catastrophically at that for the last 20 years. And so do the statistics.

If they could just dedicate two releases to snuffing out as much terminal use as possible, they could probably double their market share in a month.

Re: State of the Terminal

#146

Post by mixmastamyk »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #145
DaSHacka wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My gripe is primarily that Linux is _desparetly_ needed now more than ever as an escape from windows. If all you see Linux as is a crappy free clone of Windows with less user abuse, you'll certainly be left disappointed when it doesn't deliver. For all their faults, Microsoft pours a ton of money into Windows's usablity and backwards compatibility. If anything, it's impressive Linux DE's come close with a fraction…

>Is it really "ego" if the people working on these distros simply like it better this way? Are they wrong for developing the program (oftentimes in their free time) to accomodate the way they, and most people who contribute to the project, enjoy using it? From Ubuntu's missions statement: >We believe that bringing free software to the widest audience will empower individuals and communities to innovate, experiment an…

This is a silly thread, beginners don’t even know the terminal exists, and 99% don’t need to.

The situation is the same in Windows, though they might have a few more duplicated GUIs, they don’t solve the long tail of troubleshooting. You can also use a Mac Keyboard with Linux.

It doesn’t make any sense to remove terminals either, when available and tiny in resource use. Use an OS modeled on the original Mac OS if you want to be prevented from seeing a terminal.

Utopia never existed in the computing world. But the war on general purpose computing sure has. Soon there will be no place to turn for an experienced user who is not a slave to bigcorp interests. Unfortunately the bondage you recommend leads here, they are now coupled.

Re: State of the Terminal

#147

Post by Bjartr »

revscat wrote: post #85
blueflow wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware and i think its not okay. Its incorrect software. And yes, that difference is significant because the F-keys, Ins, End and companions won't work.

You're getting downvoted but you're not wrong. Using TERM=xterm-* should be deprecated, and in this case in particular that likely means stepping on some toes.

It's like the user agent string in browsers. Using that instead of checking for feature availability directly is always going to end up in a mess like this over time. Heck, there wasn't a Windows 9 because of how much software would break because they had `if (osversion.startswith("9"))` check to decide if it needs to act in pre-XP mode, long after XP itself was EOL. Most people aren't willing to give up functional workflows on principle alone. "stepping on some toes" massively understates the impact.

Re: State of the Terminal

#148

Post by Bjartr »

dartos wrote: post #31
lambdaba wrote: post #14

Are there any efforts to radically reimagine the entire "terminal" concept? Seems very limiting to advance further in the 21st century with those same 70's technical assumptions. [edit] I was thinking more in terms of being unconstrained by low-res displays, inability to display anything other than text, etc.

What assumptions specifically? Terminals, at the protocol level, assume nothing. It’s just streams of bytes which are processed then rendered. The protocol makes no technical assumptions, which is why it has both lived so long and is such a mess

One assumption is that it's one stream of bytes (Okay, two if you count stderr) and so control and metadata has to be interleaved with content to be displayed

Re: State of the Terminal

#149

Post by mixmastamyk »

9dev wrote: post #121
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it a bit sad that your imagination ends here. This isn't the limit of what's possible, it's a lower bound of questions that you have to answer if you want to build a replacement. > These two questions depend entirely on the chosen implementation. Okay? Feel free to include multiple answers, but you need at least one. > If we’re talking about a new implementation, should we really start by accepting the limit…

Instead of a specific key combination that a) clashes with the way the vast majority of computer users enter text, b) is neither obvious nor easily discoverable, and c) not available or awkward to enter depending on the input device, we could also separate the monitoring of running processes from the command prompt and let the terminal application offer a control to cancel them, or match modern user expectations and…

GUI Task managers have existed for decades.

If this issue is really bugging you:

- Buy a cheap Mac style keyboard and configure it as such. See kinto.

- Use a terminal with “smart paste” for a decent workaround.

Re: State of the Terminal

#150

Post by mixmastamyk »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #146
Workaccount2 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is it really "ego" if the people working on these distros simply like it better this way? Are they wrong for developing the program (oftentimes in their free time) to accomodate the way they, and most people who contribute to the project, enjoy using it? From Ubuntu's missions statement: >We believe that bringing free software to the widest audience will empower individuals and communities to innovate, experiment an…

This is a silly thread, beginners don’t even know the terminal exists, and 99% don’t need to. The situation is the same in Windows, though they might have a few more duplicated GUIs, they don’t solve the long tail of troubleshooting. You can also use a Mac Keyboard with Linux. It doesn’t make any sense to remove terminals either, when available and tiny in resource use. Use an OS modeled on the original Mac OS if you…

To extend, this issue affects an incredibly small number of computer users. The 1% that knows it exists, divided by the large fraction that is too busy (or lazy?) to work around it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40390656

The reason it falls between the cracks is because it doesn't affect enough people, especially normal folks. But let's not kid ourselves that integrating one of the existing fixes would affect the industry significantly.

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