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WebTUI – A CSS Library That Brings the Beauty of Terminal UIs to the Browser

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Re: WebTUI – A CSS Library That Brings the Beauty of Terminal UIs to the Browser

#101

Post by godelski »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #61
godelski wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obsession is because it is still the best. For all its faults, I'm still terminally terminal. The beauty of it is in the utility and how it becomes so natural. It's a language you learn that gives you so much freedom you cannot find anywhere else. I've tried many IDEs but I'll always come back to vim. It might have taken time to learn but this is true for anything else. I didn't learn a tool, I learned a language…

If it is still the best, what's the superior terminal equivalent for Photoshop, Premiere, Audacity, and Figma? Not everyone's work life revolves around text just because yours does.

I think you know your point is obtuse. Context matters in a conversation. You got me! Everyone is going you agree with you, including me. But only got me by moving the conversation to somewhere no one was considering and could be well agreed upon that it was out of scope. It's correct, there's no one size fits all.

But I'll also say, in all these applications having good key bindings is still a massive help. Those really good at these programs aren't clicking dropdown menus constantly but are issuing keystrokes in combination with the need for their mouse. In a way, that's not too different even if in another way it is

Re: WebTUI – A CSS Library That Brings the Beauty of Terminal UIs to the Browser

#102

Post by godelski »

rollcat wrote: post #82
tomxor wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not everyone's work life revolves around GUIs just because yours does. FTFY They both have their place, pros and cons, that fit different purposes differently. The mistake is in trying to assign superlatives. Two things can be true at the same time, TUIs are superior to GUIs, and GUIs are superior to TUIs, but in different contexts.

> Two things can be true at the same time, TUIs are superior to GUIs, and GUIs are superior to TUIs. TUIs are GUIs - in a trench coat. A TUI program must still process input events, draw widgets, manage state & focus, etc - all the things a GUI must do. What OTOH it can't do, is even the most basic stuff, like system clipboard or displaying pictures. You have to use side channels to get that, and once you do, you thr…

My terminal can display pictures and use the clipboard. Most of them can in fact. You might be limited in pictures on some but neither do we live in the 90's anymore. I routinely login to remote machines and view the pictures I have stored on them through my terminal

Re: WebTUI – A CSS Library That Brings the Beauty of Terminal UIs to the Browser

#103

Post by godelski »

jampekka wrote: post #72
sgarland wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a lovely sentiment. Fully agree; staying in the terminal for as much as possible makes for far less friction when context-switching.

Text-based interfaces can be done with techniques other than simulating a very restricted device from 1978.

If your terminal is from the 70's you really should get with the times. Check out ghostty or something because things are very different these days

Re: WebTUI – A CSS Library That Brings the Beauty of Terminal UIs to the Browser

#104

Post by _blk »

sgt wrote: post #75
rollcat wrote: post #22

I don't understand the obsession with 1980s terminals. They're even less powerful than the contemporary 8-bit home computers. It's perfectly OK to be a retro enthusiast, it's another thing to claim that this is the peak tech to power our modern CLIs, or a solid foundation for portable UIs. From the docs: Stop thinking in standard CSS units like px, em, rem, % Start thinking in Character Cells for spacing, sizing, and…

Occasionally when you see someone using a point of sale terminal that is terminal based, the operator usually flies through the interface like it's nothing. So there's something to be said about those types of interfaces - it may look simple and be text based, but it's the most user friendly for the qualified operator to get things done.

Airlines (and our corp. interface to it) seem to still rely on those. Kinda weird but fun to see HR/Travel people using those. They definitely have their place still.

Re: WebTUI – A CSS Library That Brings the Beauty of Terminal UIs to the Browser

#105

Post by godelski »

rollcat wrote: post #43
godelski wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obsession is because it is still the best. For all its faults, I'm still terminally terminal. The beauty of it is in the utility and how it becomes so natural. It's a language you learn that gives you so much freedom you cannot find anywhere else. I've tried many IDEs but I'll always come back to vim. It might have taken time to learn but this is true for anything else. I didn't learn a tool, I learned a language…

> I've tried many IDEs but I'll always come back to vim. Vim and Emacs both have GUIs. As an Emacs user, I subjectively find the GUI superior - I can e.g. rebind Cmd-S to "save", and that's a reason enough. > It's a language you learn [...] You mean the serial lines and ANSI escape codes and termcap? I would say it's more like pidgin with a dozen obscure dialects, and a body language on top. Try writing a portable TU…

  > I can e.g. rebind Cmd-S to "save", and that's a reason enough.
I'm no emacs user but I'm pretty confident you don't need a GUI for that. I can certainly do that in vim in the terminal.

  :nmap  :w

  > In vi, it's "Esc-q!-Enter"
That's not accurate. In vi it is :q (: then q then enter). The escape (or Do you also get pissed off when you modify a word document, click quit, and it asks you if you're sure and like to quit without saving? It's literally the same thing.

Idk I just don't see the problems you are talking about. They aren't things I face. On my Mac I can still use native cmd+{c,v} and on anything else I'm not upset by adding a shift. Though most of the time I'm yanking and pasting because I can "vim" in bash, zsh, hell I can even do it in ipython! In tmux and screen I just type exit or to kill a pane. You say it's just the beginning and I agree, but I think you missed that in tools like vim the language is the motion and actions. It's why I can discover "new commands" but it's like discovering you can jump over a box when you already know how to jump. If you're just trying to memorize commands and combinations you are doing it wrong. I'm sorry whoever taught you failed you, and I'm sorry there's so much noise.

But if we want to be pedantic then you're going to have to admit that cmd+q and don't always quit. Many times they just close the window. Sure, alt+F4 is different, but that's a force kill list like typing "pkill " or simply (which came first? or ?)

It's not like I don't use a GUI at all. But yeah, it's nice to not lift my hand from the keyboard. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy if you're happy, I believe the best tool for you is the best tool for you. But if you want to understand why I'm obsessed, you have to try to see what I see, from my eyes and not yours. It's hard over text like this, that's fair.

And you're right! We do deserve better! If you ask me, my number one annoyance is when the computer won't let me do things. I'm very frustrated with both windows and Mac since they put up so many walls that make it difficult for me to shape my machine the way I want. Sure, this is hard in Linux but there's no locked doors in which I need to find a key (other than sudo) or a back door. I edit my dotfiles to make these things a part me, why would we not want to carry on that idea?

Re: WebTUI – A CSS Library That Brings the Beauty of Terminal UIs to the Browser

#107

Post by nsonha »

rollcat wrote: post #22

I don't understand the obsession with 1980s terminals. They're even less powerful than the contemporary 8-bit home computers. It's perfectly OK to be a retro enthusiast, it's another thing to claim that this is the peak tech to power our modern CLIs, or a solid foundation for portable UIs. From the docs: Stop thinking in standard CSS units like px, em, rem, % Start thinking in Character Cells for spacing, sizing, and…

I like terminal aesthetic, and I think the modeen equivalent of it is high constrast UI, plus minimalistic elements. Forcing character cells onto the web is dumb.

Re: WebTUI – A CSS Library That Brings the Beauty of Terminal UIs to the Browser

#108

Post by MrJohz »

sgt wrote: post #75
rollcat wrote: post #22

I don't understand the obsession with 1980s terminals. They're even less powerful than the contemporary 8-bit home computers. It's perfectly OK to be a retro enthusiast, it's another thing to claim that this is the peak tech to power our modern CLIs, or a solid foundation for portable UIs. From the docs: Stop thinking in standard CSS units like px, em, rem, % Start thinking in Character Cells for spacing, sizing, and…

Occasionally when you see someone using a point of sale terminal that is terminal based, the operator usually flies through the interface like it's nothing. So there's something to be said about those types of interfaces - it may look simple and be text based, but it's the most user friendly for the qualified operator to get things done.

I've definitely seen this in real life, but recently I've started trying to actually watch when people use these interfaces, and they usually seem very slow - lots of hesitation, lots of mistakes, lots of repetition to do very simple actions. I watched someone use a terminal PoS recently and to clear a text input and insert a new value, she had to navigate to the start of the text box (no home key or anything like that), type new characters over the old ones, and then at the end delete any leftover characters from the previous input that they hadn't typed over. In a modern GUI, I would expect the user to have to (1) tab to the text box or press ctrl-A if they were in that text box, then (2) type the value they were interested in, possibly with typeahead support if it makes sense.

My working theory is that these terminal-based UIs aren't quicker because they're terminal-based, but rather users need to learn the keyboard shortcuts because they're so painful to use any other way. A well-designed GUI equivalent could be significantly quicker, and much easier to learn, but nobody wants to pay for that.

Re: WebTUI – A CSS Library That Brings the Beauty of Terminal UIs to the Browser

#109

Post by kmeisthax »

geocar wrote: post #96
kmeisthax wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good GUI apps have shittons of keyboard shortcuts to achieve the same result. The ideal is that the qualified operator keeps their hands on the keyboard for anything that isn't an actual pointing operation. For example, in a video editing app, you can rough-cut with a handful of keys[0] for setting in and out points, jogging through the source material, and inserting into the current active timeline. The keyboard isn…

> every GUI app had searchable menus They do on mac: shift+⌘+? opens a "search menu" menu.

OH MY GOD. I never knew about that.

Re: WebTUI – A CSS Library That Brings the Beauty of Terminal UIs to the Browser

#110

Post by no_wizard »

geocar wrote: post #96
kmeisthax wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good GUI apps have shittons of keyboard shortcuts to achieve the same result. The ideal is that the qualified operator keeps their hands on the keyboard for anything that isn't an actual pointing operation. For example, in a video editing app, you can rough-cut with a handful of keys[0] for setting in and out points, jogging through the source material, and inserting into the current active timeline. The keyboard isn…

> every GUI app had searchable menus They do on mac: shift+⌘+? opens a "search menu" menu.

This doesn’t always show everything. It’s up to developers to make sure some shortcuts can show up in this documentation beyond system ones

Luckily most do, but I’ve encountered situations where they haven’t and it only shows compatible system shortcuts

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