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Ghostling

github.com

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Re: Ghostling

#21

Post by herewulf »

imiric wrote: post #9

This looks interesting. I don't need my terminal emulator to support tabs, windows, or session management. My WM manages tabs and windows, and I use tmux for sessions, which also gives me a scrollback buffer, selection, clipboard, search, etc. This combination allows me to use any simple terminal emulator, such as urxvt, st, and now foot, without issues. Ghostty didn't appeal to me, but I might give this a try. It's…

On tiling WMs I use rxvt-unicode with no window decorations, no gaps, 1 px border, no scrollbar. Then tmux does the rest, namely tabs and splits. Automatic session saving has been a life saver on more than one occasion.

Re: Ghostling

#22

Post by conradev »

vintagedave wrote: post #2

The C file is small enough to read (over a few minutes.) I got to about line 5 and realized: I’ve never seen quite that technique for embedding a font via an autogenerated header before. I’m more used to Windows resources; this seems to generate a byte array in CMake code. I’m somewhere between horrified and impressed, in that I feel we’ve finally discovered a cross platform binary resource embedding solution.

I think this has been around for a while:

  $ echo 'test' | xxd -i -n foo
  unsigned char foo[] = {
    0x74, 0x65, 0x73, 0x74, 0x0a
  };
  unsigned int foo_len = 5;
(edit: 30 years)

Re: Ghostling

#23

Post by girvo »

oDot wrote: post #4

I use libghostty for Trolley[0], which packages TUIs as desktop apps, like Electron does for web apps. It really is quite an amazing piece of software. I just wrapped it in a useful GUI and a bundle/package CLI and it just works. Even on Windows. Kudos to the Ghostty developers. [0] https://github.com/weedonandscott/trolley

I kind of want to use this to turn Wordgrinder into a Mac app haha

Re: Ghostling

#24

Post by eddythompson80 »

nixpulvis wrote: post #13
imiric wrote: post #9

This looks interesting. I don't need my terminal emulator to support tabs, windows, or session management. My WM manages tabs and windows, and I use tmux for sessions, which also gives me a scrollback buffer, selection, clipboard, search, etc. This combination allows me to use any simple terminal emulator, such as urxvt, st, and now foot, without issues. Ghostty didn't appeal to me, but I might give this a try. It's…

It's comical how much time I've spent convincing people that tabs are a window manager feature not an application feature. People in the Alacritty issue on the subject were pissed!

Yes, we need tabs for RDR2 and Spotify.

Re: Ghostling

#25

Post by esperent »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #24
nixpulvis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's comical how much time I've spent convincing people that tabs are a window manager feature not an application feature. People in the Alacritty issue on the subject were pissed!

Yes, we need tabs for RDR2 and Spotify.

I would love tabs for Spotify. I just discovered I can at least open new windows from the linux YouTube music client by middle clicking, a revelation !

Re: Ghostling

#26

Post by ecliptik »

theowaway213456 wrote: post #15
nixpulvis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's comical how much time I've spent convincing people that tabs are a window manager feature not an application feature. People in the Alacritty issue on the subject were pissed!

Are there any good, non-tiling window managers that support tabs? (I struggle with tiling ones like i3 because I am a small-brained mouse user)

Fluxbox has tabs and is a stacking window manager.

- https://fluxbox.org/features/

Re: Ghostling

#27

Post by eddythompson80 »

esperent wrote: post #25
eddythompson80 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we need tabs for RDR2 and Spotify.

I would love tabs for Spotify. I just discovered I can at least open new windows from the linux YouTube music client by middle clicking, a revelation !

Every application (or concept) can introduce “tabs”, but it means something wildly different for that particular application. Tabs (or instances) in an application immediately bumps into the concept of state (statefull vs stateless) in applications.

Sometimes, it makes perfect sense. The reason tabs made sense for web browsers since 2004 is because each web page could be thought of as a “stateless” instance of an application. You’re not asking for “tabs”, you wish every application could be “Stateless”. Stateless is a beautiful thing, until you understand what state is, and who needs to manage it.

If every “tab” of Spotify had no idea what the other “tab” is playing and you had to switch back and forth between tabs to pause-and-play songs, that would be a bug, not a feature. While 2 “windows” playing audio (if you instruct them to) is expected.

Re: Ghostling

#28

Post by hombre_fatal »

nixpulvis wrote: post #13
imiric wrote: post #9

This looks interesting. I don't need my terminal emulator to support tabs, windows, or session management. My WM manages tabs and windows, and I use tmux for sessions, which also gives me a scrollback buffer, selection, clipboard, search, etc. This combination allows me to use any simple terminal emulator, such as urxvt, st, and now foot, without issues. Ghostty didn't appeal to me, but I might give this a try. It's…

It's comical how much time I've spent convincing people that tabs are a window manager feature not an application feature. People in the Alacritty issue on the subject were pissed!

I've heard this a lot on HN over the years but it doesn't make much sense to me. Some thoughts:

1. App tabs improves UX for 99.999% of users who aren't using a WM with a good tab solution (if one even exists).

2. WM tabs means launching a new app instance for every tab you might want vs having lightweight app tabs.

3. App tabs can do all sorts of app-level things and UX polish that dumb WM tabs can't do because they are so general. My terminal emulator tabs show a badge count of bell notifications, can be dragged around into groups, or dragging into other tabs as split panes. My browser tabs show you which tab is playing music and can impl right click -> mute.

4. I bet even the biggest WM tab cheerleader still uses browser tabs.

5. WM tabs are a different concern than app tabs, not a replacement. WM tabs are useful when you want tabs and the app doesn't provide a good tab metaphor or when you want to tile/group app instances a certain way. That doesn't mean it's not useful for the app instances themselves to have app tabs when it makes sense.

Re: Ghostling

#29

Post by qudat »

imiric wrote: post #9

This looks interesting. I don't need my terminal emulator to support tabs, windows, or session management. My WM manages tabs and windows, and I use tmux for sessions, which also gives me a scrollback buffer, selection, clipboard, search, etc. This combination allows me to use any simple terminal emulator, such as urxvt, st, and now foot, without issues. Ghostty didn't appeal to me, but I might give this a try. It's…

Interesting you mention tmux because it itself resembles a terminal emulator. It has its own terminal feature matrix that controls what your parent emulator can render. It sounds like you aren’t using tabs and splits in tmux but it does include them.

It sounds like you could get away with using a tool like https://zmx.sh which only handles session persistence (attach/detach). It also uses libghostty but only for state restoration on reattach.

Re: Ghostling

#30

Post by cstrahan »

nout wrote: post #7
oDot wrote: post #4

I use libghostty for Trolley[0], which packages TUIs as desktop apps, like Electron does for web apps. It really is quite an amazing piece of software. I just wrapped it in a useful GUI and a bundle/package CLI and it just works. Even on Windows. Kudos to the Ghostty developers. [0] https://github.com/weedonandscott/trolley

I think your github readme is really missing a picture/screenshot to quickly understand what is the experience like. I.e. if your app is mainly about adding the chrome (as in the surrounding UI pixels) around the TUI, then it would be good to show what is the chrome like.

Nah, I think it’s pretty clear. It would look like a terminal emulator. Just like how Electron looks like a bunch of browser widgets - because it’s literally a single-web-app browser.
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