TUIs are popular because Unix didn't have graphics. Plan9 had graphics but didn't catch on. Making us living in an emulated terminal device.
Stop Making TUIs
361–370 of 579 posts
Re: Stop Making TUIs
#362Re: Stop Making TUIs
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
Opening more than one instance is the default, developers have to actively work to block it. At least on desktop.
Which desktop? It's not true for AppKit, SwiftUI, GTK, Qt, WinUI, or Electron, and I'm not sure what's left.
Electron requires effort to get single instance. I've had to implement it. You need to call this:
https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/api/app#apprequestsin...
and handle this event:
https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/api/app#event-second-...
I believe macos is the only OS that enforces single instance by default. If you start xterm five times on linux, you get five independent xterm processes.
Re: Stop Making TUIs
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think the answer to this is probably to throw all that compatibility mess away > TUIs run on any OS with minor patches to support quirks So, which one is it?
Those two are not contradictory statements
> Those two are not contradictory statements
I really think they are. The reason for terminals’ ubiquity is precisely their age, and their age results in them standardizing and accumulating bizarre behaviors.
Even in the microcomputer era, standardizing behavior to where it’s literally everywhere someone might want it takes time (e.g. the browser compatibility wars). Re-standardizing terminal behavior is both chasing a way wider (in terms of the number of places folks expect terminals to work the exact same way) but shallower in feature complexity target compared to browsers, and would necessarily be replacing a widely adopted existing standard behavior, not providing something largely novel like the graphical web was. That’s a tall order. I am hopeful for and impressed by the efforts of folks like Hashimoto, but expectations here should be tempered.
Re: Stop Making TUIs
#365The site layout is great for reading, so props to the author.
I understand the sentiment that TUIs is not as accessible, sucks to use. I still do not like the fact that we should "stop making TUIs" altogether.
Let me give you an example from my carpenter friend in Cananda. He has a saw (TUI) and electric one (GUI).
He uses the saw in diff ways than his electric one. He sometimes extend the saw by attaching it to end of a long stick to cut tree branches he cannot reach. He can do it with the eletric saw but requires much more effort.
But if he needs to cut down the tree, he uses the electric one, and sometimes finish off (trim) with the regular saw (so the tree falls in certain direction).
The gist is, TUIs can be used to do things quick and dirty, and easy/cheap to make/buy. GUI even with AIs, still not as cheap as TUIs to build.
TUIs has a different usage in our field, where it's used more for automation/piping. If you have GUI, it's hard to pull it off unless you build the functionality (which coulda been a command in TUI), and expose it via GUI. the Authros is focused more on consumer side than builder side. With AIs we will all be builders using AIs.
Lastly, shooting down people building TUIs is saying, no more innovations, by building upon other's TUI inspirations.
Re: Stop Making TUIs
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except web. Which inexplicably got all of these when no one was looking
Not fast.
Not “not ugly” either. The flexibility is too high and standardization of UX is too low. Technically, we’re missing adoption of default standard toolkits like swing or GTK, and politically a11y/compliance checkers are a far cry from something like the HIG of old.
Re: Stop Making TUIs
#367And the very first app example is a Mac-only markdown viewer. If only it was a TUI; then I could try it out and partake in this conversation!
Re: Stop Making TUIs
#368Counter proposal: stop making gui, ONLY make TUI. + seamless cli integration + network portable + graphics (!!) with modern emulators + always themable + scriptable + works with any navigation modality + you can copy & paste entire segments of your window easily + easy to consistently theme + did i mention entirely network/os transparent? + blazing fast tongue-in-cheeck mostly, but i assure tfa, the tui serves useful…
https://arcan-fe.com/ proves you can have all of that and more without having an archaic TUI.
Re: Stop Making TUIs
#369TUIs are great as a layer above bunch of commands with too many commandline parameters and flags. For everything else .. no, thank you.
Re: Stop Making TUIs
#370Some folks love to live in the golden age of CP/M, MS-DOS, and timesharing green and amber terminals, for whatever reason.
I was alive back then already, and was a relief to finally be able to afford GUI powered computers.