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Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

ratty-term.org

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Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#231

Post by pjmlp »

noelwelsh wrote: post #46

I like this. No reason the terminal should only support text. Data science notebooks show one way the terminal can evolve. Lots of interesting stuff happening in this space, with Kitty probably being the most aggressive innovator here [1]. I'm not sure there is an overall vision, though. [1]: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/protocol-extensions/

It doesn't, that is an issue with how UNIX terminals came to be, and the whole backwards compatibility pretending that an HiDPi screen is a VT 100.

Terminals on other operating systems that grew up with a framebuffer don't have this limitation.

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#233

Post by pjmlp »

MayeulC wrote: post #203
silon42 wrote: post #25

IMO, next crazy step is for terminal to just have wayland or X11 protocol ? (/s or not?)

I have been thinking about this for a while. It's not as crazy as it may sound, especially in light of the other comments making a parallel between terminals and notebooks. A few thoughts: 1. Linux VTs kind of have this feature already: there is the normal buffer, the alternate buffer (that something like htop would draw on), and an IOctl can change them to/from graphics mode. 2. It makes sense for interactivity. Kit…

Outside UNIX world, there is no much to think about, see:

- Atari ST GEM OS

- AmigaDOS

- Smalltalk

- Interlisp-D

- Genera

- Oberon

- MS-DOS (mode 13h and VESA)

- TempleOS

- Mac OS classic

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#235

Post by jdougan »

pjmlp wrote: post #231
noelwelsh wrote: post #46

I like this. No reason the terminal should only support text. Data science notebooks show one way the terminal can evolve. Lots of interesting stuff happening in this space, with Kitty probably being the most aggressive innovator here [1]. I'm not sure there is an overall vision, though. [1]: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/protocol-extensions/

It doesn't, that is an issue with how UNIX terminals came to be, and the whole backwards compatibility pretending that an HiDPi screen is a VT 100. Terminals on other operating systems that grew up with a framebuffer don't have this limitation.

Or for that matter, the magic that was a Tektronix storage scope terminal (and compatibles. At school there was a vt10x that had been modified to act like a Tek 4014 by some third party).

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#236

Post by tikimcfee »

wavemode wrote: post #220
tikimcfee wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a working fully 3D glyph based text rendering system I can't seem to get people to look at. It's this. Every character is a 3d placed quad, instanced rendered, so you get tens of millions and then some. They are individually addressable and mutable like any polygon. I use it to render entire GitHub repos in one go. I have two versions, native Apple and web. Web has the basics of an ide setup. Would love insigh…

Is there a reliable way to pan around? Middle click + drag doesn't pan if my screen is covered by an object, it just moves the object itself. Scrollwheel pans up and down but I can't figure out how to go left and right. The minimap is too coarse - when I'm zoomed in close enough to read any text, very tiny movements of my mouse on the minimap pan around massively, too massively to be useful.

Two things, one is wrote, the other is direct: Thank you, sincerely, an immeasurably appreciative amount for trying something new, sharing your time and opinion, and being honest with it. This is how we become better tool builders and engineers: different perspectives, different ways of thinking, and honesty with others. Again - thank you.

Ok, now for you: Interaction is absolutely not ideal. I've tried a number of 'defaults' across the years and across platforms, and this isn't the one I want to settle on. At the moment, the 'shortcuts' and bindings page is also a bit out of date, but you can change scroll / zoom directions with keyboard modifiers, and they keyboard itself (if on a device that has one) can be used to navigate around. Agreed that scaled interaction is the trick to this when reading individual files, and that's why I have tried to allow this to be configurable and dynamic while testing. Some people want big picture motions first to get a mental map, some want to focus on small groups of individual files to read. I'll be taking this into account!

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#237

Post by tikimcfee »

pitched wrote: post #207
tikimcfee wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a working fully 3D glyph based text rendering system I can't seem to get people to look at. It's this. Every character is a 3d placed quad, instanced rendered, so you get tens of millions and then some. They are individually addressable and mutable like any polygon. I use it to render entire GitHub repos in one go. I have two versions, native Apple and web. Web has the basics of an ide setup. Would love insigh…

I opened and it said to use a repo tab. There are no tabs so I pushed a button. It had a list with Linux so I clicked that. It redirected to a 404 page on github and I gave up. I don’t know what this is supposed to do, let alone how to use it. But I looked at it for you!

Two things, one is wrote, the other is direct: Thank you, sincerely, an immeasurably appreciative amount for trying something new, sharing your time and opinion, and being honest with it. This is how we become better tool builders and engineers: different perspectives, different ways of thinking, and honesty with others. Again - thank you.

For you: The 'tab' layout is pretty atrocious even as a one-shot run through of fitting most of the control areas to mobile and desktop screens. It's not easy, and a lot of 'feature' bloat makes it worse. Knowing what your first-time drop in was like and how you found that link is incredibly useful insight, and I'll be updating the layouts more to accompany first timers and instructions like the original source material I'm rebuilding from on the Apple side.

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#238

Post by tikimcfee »

em-bee wrote: post #205
tikimcfee wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a working fully 3D glyph based text rendering system I can't seem to get people to look at. It's this. Every character is a 3d placed quad, instanced rendered, so you get tens of millions and then some. They are individually addressable and mutable like any polygon. I use it to render entire GitHub repos in one go. I have two versions, native Apple and web. Web has the basics of an ide setup. Would love insigh…

it opens source files in an unreadable small size, presumably to fir the whole file into the window. i can zoom in, but i can't properly scroll around or select text. and i don't see the benefit of using 3d here. it doesn't seem useful.

Two things, one is wrote, the other is direct: Thank you, sincerely, an immeasurably appreciative amount for trying something new, sharing your time and opinion, and being honest with it. This is how we become better tool builders and engineers: different perspectives, different ways of thinking, and honesty with others. Again - thank you.

For you: You're probably right about "not seeming useful", but I do wanna gently nudge you toward what this is a proof of concept about again. Most folks look at this like it's a bigger, flatter emacs/vim/Sublime/VSCode or whatever. I do support editing in my current workbranch, as well as command-based selection, but most of the work spins out because the tool is half "adopt what tools are useful to an interactive development environment of today" and "allow the display of the canvas to overlap with the spatial relationships of directories, files, and colocation to help generate mental mappings of a code space".

These things have often been in conflict, and years (decades) of prior art show this. This is my attempt at it, and since it's my 3rd attempt in twice as many years to make it work in a new environment, you're hitting this particular instance's walls. Would love more feedback or questions!

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#239

Post by tikimcfee »

chaidhat wrote: post #208
tikimcfee wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a working fully 3D glyph based text rendering system I can't seem to get people to look at. It's this. Every character is a 3d placed quad, instanced rendered, so you get tens of millions and then some. They are individually addressable and mutable like any polygon. I use it to render entire GitHub repos in one go. I have two versions, native Apple and web. Web has the basics of an ide setup. Would love insigh…

looked at it. I don't think it works, as the other person said.

Two things, one is wrote, the other is direct: Thank you, sincerely, an immeasurably appreciative amount for trying something new, sharing your time and opinion, and being honest with it. This is how we become better tool builders and engineers: different perspectives, different ways of thinking, and honesty with others. Again - thank you.

Second up: I'd love some input as to what didn't work! Did a shader fail to load? Desktop or mobile? Did you load a repository that was too large and OOM'd out in the browser? Did it cause your monitor to spin 360 degrees and speak tongues? Do tell!

Re: Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

#240

Post by tikimcfee »

naikrovek wrote: post #214
chaidhat wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

looked at it. I don't think it works, as the other person said.

It works.

Two things, one is wrote, the other is direct: Thank you, sincerely, an immeasurably appreciative amount for trying something new, sharing your time and opinion, and being honest with it. This is how we become better tool builders and engineers: different perspectives, different ways of thinking, and honesty with others. Again - thank you.

Second: Thanks for the confirmation! If you've got any thoughts or feedback, please be as direct as you'd like - I've already started cleaning up some of the more 'user friendly' notes I've been neglecting in an effort to stick to the internals.

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