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Entering text in the terminal is complicated

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Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated

#121

Post by hiccuphippo »

kragen wrote: post #95
Workaccount2 wrote: post #12

I have continually contented that the terminal is the single thing eternally condemning Linux to It's not just entering text. The entire experience is complicated. It's a Concorde jet cockpit[1] (with no labels too), when 95% of the population just wants to fly their drone around[2]. [1] https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-2566f4c91b894e4169d77... [2] https://media.thedroningcompany.com/images/tincy/WQZpC56vqMp...

if you have a problem with gnu/linux (as opposed to android) you can usually find the solution on stack overflow, server fault, or superuser, but the solution you find there is going to be a textual command line, not a gui. gpt-4 can tell you how to solve the problem, but only using a textual command line, not a gui. text is the most powerful, useful, effective communication technology ever, period. always bet on tex…

It also allows you to copypaste the solution, as opposed to following directions for a GUI settings window.

Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated

#122

Post by jwrallie »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #12

I have continually contented that the terminal is the single thing eternally condemning Linux to It's not just entering text. The entire experience is complicated. It's a Concorde jet cockpit[1] (with no labels too), when 95% of the population just wants to fly their drone around[2]. [1] https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-2566f4c91b894e4169d77... [2] https://media.thedroningcompany.com/images/tincy/WQZpC56vqMp...

When things work fine, then the average person does not need a terminal.

When you do have to fix something, you need a terminal. On Windows you need to touch the registry or worse. Try attaching a debugger to figure out the reason of a blue screen and tell me how user friendly it is.

Finding and changing a cryptic file to fix an issue is troublesome, but if the alternative is "just works" well... you cannot blame the terminal in that case, but the problems that are showing up.

Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated

#123

Post by Workaccount2 »

xp84 wrote: post #93
yencabulator wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is "it just won't work". You too can live in that world by simply not trying to fix it. My wife's Macbook won't suspend correctly when it's plugged into a Dell monitor, the monitor going into power save wakes up the laptop. I wish there was an arcane incantation that would fix it, but no, the proprietary walled garden is well locked up, with glossy user-friendly rounded corners everywhere.

This is the most insightful post in the thread -- there's definitely a false dichotomy here. It's not "have to use a terminal" vs "everything works without a need for a terminal ever" -- it's "able to use a terminal to accomplish some goal or recover from Really Bad Thing" vs "Can't Do That Thing / have to factory restore to recover". Like the way Apple Maps on my iPhone can't save the person to notify when I navigat…

I think my main gripe though is that there simply isn't enough drive to move things out of the terminal and into a GUI.

I really think that a core problem is that once you are in a position where you are contributing to distros, contributing to the kernal, you are well versed and acquainted with the terminal, and you love it's incredible power and efficiency. The cockpit is no longer a sci-fi meme, it's a meticulous masterpiece granting a god-like computing interface. Nobody at that level is interested in much GUI-ification, because, holy shit, this CLI is the best! (Never mind that software engineering is dominated by "complexity and control" types vs "simplicity and automatic" types of the wider population.)

Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated

#124

Post by Workaccount2 »

kragen wrote: post #95
Workaccount2 wrote: post #12

I have continually contented that the terminal is the single thing eternally condemning Linux to It's not just entering text. The entire experience is complicated. It's a Concorde jet cockpit[1] (with no labels too), when 95% of the population just wants to fly their drone around[2]. [1] https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-2566f4c91b894e4169d77... [2] https://media.thedroningcompany.com/images/tincy/WQZpC56vqMp...

if you have a problem with gnu/linux (as opposed to android) you can usually find the solution on stack overflow, server fault, or superuser, but the solution you find there is going to be a textual command line, not a gui. gpt-4 can tell you how to solve the problem, but only using a textual command line, not a gui. text is the most powerful, useful, effective communication technology ever, period. always bet on tex…

But that is passionately what I hate about it.

In GUI environments there are check boxes, buttons, menus and english labels for everything.

With linux it's like you are copying down a sacred language and presenting it at the alter with your fingers crossed. You just changed something. Didn't fix the problem. But the change still happened. Can you undo it? Probably not without way more digging. So now you just cross another set of fingers hoping you didn't break it more, or break something else in the future.

Compare to windows:

I checked this box that says "disable firewall". Then hit "Apply".

That did not fix my problem.

I unchecked the box that says "disable firewall". Then hit "Apply".

Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated

#125

Post by renewiltord »

asciimov wrote: post #7

In bash, if you set $EDITOR to your favorite text editor, you can send the current line to $EDITOR with ctrl-x ctrl-e. After editing the command you can save and exit for the command to execute.

I use this with copilot.vim in Neovim and EDITOR=nvim to get AI shell autocomplete. It's pretty good!

Got it from here https://twitter.com/arjie/status/1575201117595926530?s=46&t=...

Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated

#126

Post by shadowgovt »

xp84 wrote: post #93
yencabulator wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is "it just won't work". You too can live in that world by simply not trying to fix it. My wife's Macbook won't suspend correctly when it's plugged into a Dell monitor, the monitor going into power save wakes up the laptop. I wish there was an arcane incantation that would fix it, but no, the proprietary walled garden is well locked up, with glossy user-friendly rounded corners everywhere.

This is the most insightful post in the thread -- there's definitely a false dichotomy here. It's not "have to use a terminal" vs "everything works without a need for a terminal ever" -- it's "able to use a terminal to accomplish some goal or recover from Really Bad Thing" vs "Can't Do That Thing / have to factory restore to recover". Like the way Apple Maps on my iPhone can't save the person to notify when I navigat…

In general, Apple would solve that problem by recommending you plug an Apple computer into an Apple monitor.

The Apple ecosystem is well incentivized to make all of their pieces work with their other pieces. The Windows ecosystem is pretty decently incentivized to make things work together in general (In both directions... Windows suffers in sales if there's some popular hardware it won't work with, and popular hardware suffers in sales if it doesn't work with Windows).

One certainly does run into the occasional Dell monitor with Apple laptop problem that you then need a couple of insider specialists to address. But I've not really been sold on the notion that The open ecosystem is strictly superior in that sense... In theory it is, in practice you can't be an expert at everything and there's no guarantee anyone's going to come along and care about how to fix your particular Dell / Linux distro configuration.

Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated

#127

Post by shadowgovt »

mxuribe wrote: post #59
shadowgovt wrote: post #46

> license reasons, if the program’s license is not GPL-compatible – readline is GPL-licensed, not LGPL The older I get, the less patient I become with finding out some user experience sucks because of GPL / non-GPL knife fights. It's been thirty-nine years now. I think the GPL was useful at its origin, but now the benefits of open-source are proven out, the world is deeply interconnected via the Internet, and it's a…

@shadowgovt Genuine question: if i wanted to create new software nowadays, and i wished for it to be as you noted "mmaximally unencumbered from interoperation", which license should i choose for my software? Which license would you use? Again, not trying to be snarky; just wanting to learn and understand. :-)

I generally use the ISC license these days. It is short, indemnifies me from damage caused by the software I write being used by other people, has a thin requirement that the copyright be carried forward into other projects using my code (A requirement that I'm probably not going to enforce), And that's it. No encumbrances against interoperation with other people's code.

Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated

#128

Post by Pr0ject217 »

colmmacc wrote: post #105

Over 20 years ago now I wrote a state machine around readline that meant you could use it as a multi-line editor. Not "multi-line" as in a single line can wrap, but a true editor that lets you move up and down, but is windowless. Here's a video: https://github.com/colmmacc/jot/raw/master/jot-demo.mp4 and the CVS repository for the Unix terminal IM client it is part of is at: https://c-hey.redbrick.dcu.ie/src/c-hey_cv…

Checked out the video. Looks cool!

Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated

#129

Post by drowsspa »

asciimov wrote: post #7

In bash, if you set $EDITOR to your favorite text editor, you can send the current line to $EDITOR with ctrl-x ctrl-e. After editing the command you can save and exit for the command to execute.

I love these shortcuts but sadly I never remember them when I do need them

Re: Entering text in the terminal is complicated

#130

Post by kazinator »

kragen wrote: post #113
kazinator wrote: post #82

I've never seen dash dump escape sequences instead of acting on arrow keys. Probably, it's due to a missing or wrong TERM value? Nowadays, programs should be hard-coded to accept ANSI sequences and ignore TERM (unless they need to make some fine-grained distinction like do we have 256 color xterm compatibility). Those programs will never have that problem of not understanding arrow keys.

it's more likely because she's running a version of dash compiled without readline support, probably debian's version (which is compiled that way because it's not intended as an interactive shell, but rather the lightest-weight posix-compliant shell they could build) i agree about ansi sequences. even that doesn't go far enough, though: we should probably be moving past character-cell terminals to something better so…

Looks like I'm wrong. If I fire up an interactive dash on Ubuntu or Debian, no arrow keys. /bin/sh is dash, but that's only for hash bang scripts.

Not just no arrow keys, but nothing. No Ctrl-P to recall previous line. No editing beyond the POSIX TTY line discipline stuff: Ctrl-W word erase, Ctrl-U line erase, backspace.

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