WebTUI – A CSS Library That Brings the Beauty of Terminal UIs to the Browser • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by ranger_danger » Wed, Apr 16, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

c-hendricks wrote: post #150

ranger_danger wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly makes an app a "KDE app"? Obviously a game with a custom UI is not going to have the same searchable menu, right?

I don't think I mentioned "KDE app" or games? KDE's Global Menu works with apps built with other toolkits than QT, and games are typically not considered apps. It would be cool if games did something similar though, I would love to be able to go into a games options and type "subtitles" to quickly find the option.

> KDE's Global Menu works with apps built with other toolkits than QT

Their own wiki page says it does not: https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Known_Significant_I...

"Global Menu is not supported for non-Qt apps"

But either way, I still disagree with your comment that "all GUI apps on macOS and KDE (Wayland) have searchable menus", because this requires a menu system that is exported via a specific DBus protocol (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75215820/how-to-implemen...), meaning it requires support from the application itself (possibly via some toolkit it uses), which IMO is demonstrably not "all apps".

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

#152

Post by queenkjuul » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 12:13 PM UTC

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.

Nah i could whip through the GUI POS software at every job that had full keyboard shortcuts for everything on screen. It's the keyboard, not the on screen UI that makes it fast. Replace a keyboard with a touch screen and things will slow down (except maybe jobs where you don't tend to have both hands free--bars and restaurants perhaps)

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

#153

Post by queenkjuul » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 12:20 PM UTC

EasyMark wrote: post #119

sgt wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

once those keys become muscle memory no mouse driven interface will ever repair lol. I used to work best buy and they had a bunch of backend inventory/database stuff and I could absolutely fly through those. I used be able to do the same with wordperfect as well. now all those skills and muscle memory..... gone like tears in the rain.

15 years ago the best buy front end pos terminals were also very keyboard navigable. I could fly through that stuff without touching the, uh, "pointing stick" or whatever IBM calls the little nub they put on their laptops and PoS terminals

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

#154

Post by queenkjuul » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 12:24 PM UTC

sva_ wrote: post #112

rollcat wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> By contrast, on macOS it's Cmd-Q; on Windows, it's Alt-F4; and so on. Innovation happens on stable foundations, not by pulling rugs. That's the window manager of the respective systems though. On i3, I can also kill any window by pressing Option-Shift-q. But that's more like the sledgehammer approach and not how I'd close a text editor on any system ...

Well to be pedantic, no, macOS Cmd-Q is quite distinct from closing the window

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

#155

Post by queenkjuul » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 12:27 PM UTC

geocar wrote: post #132

rollcat wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Here's the painful truth: you can't quit a TUI application without learning it So what? I'm not so sure you can learn Photoshop without either watching someone use it or reading a few books on it, whilst emacs maintains an excellent tutorial that it tells you to read multiple times when you start it. In the 1990s and early 2000s I volunteered at a senior center teaching people how to move the mouse and translate th…

I learned Photoshop by clicking the icons that looked like what i wanted to do and then clicking the image to see what happened. I'd never seen anyone else use it and i didn't have Internet access.

Did someone teach you MSPaint? Or notepad? Or did the discoverability of visible controls guide you to how to use them?

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

#156

Post by queenkjuul » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 12:33 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #148

rollcat wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Partly because they do it badly, and partly because it's harder for other applications to read the pixels. I can select text in a web browser or a spreadsheet or a chat app just fine. > The application just told the display to write some text there, but the clipboard has to ask again what text is there, wait for a response, and let the other program know. Meanwhile the terminal just knows, so it's faster. How does…

> You're missing my point entirely The reason you're having a hard time communicating is because, honestly, you do not understand how these things work. You've made assumptions about how they work but be honest with yourself, could you code them up yourself? I don't mean gluing some libraries together, I mean straight up in C. I'm pretty sure the person you're responding to would say they couldn't (I sure couldn't!).…

There certainly is a bad culture of being know it alls, that much is very apparent

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

#157

Post by queenkjuul » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 12:46 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #105

rollcat wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

To be extra pedantic, any app following Apple guidelines will quit on Cmd-Q, it should never (and I've never seen it so) only close a window, and alt-F4 isn't any different than clicking the close button with your mouse.

Really the point being, modern GUI applications (hell even not-modern 90s DOS applications) almost universally follow a common set of guidelines that were established many decades ago and have been more or less consistent across multiple platforms for many people's entire lives, vs the land of Vim and emacs and screen et. al. where every app has its own bespoke method of operation.

I think there's a benefit to the former even in TUI apps. If i remote into a client's system, or jump on my coworkers laptop, or am setting up a new system, it's good to know how it's going to work.

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

#158

Post by queenkjuul » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 1:08 PM UTC

graemep wrote: post #70

imiric wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great, but keyboard shortcuts are not exclusive to TUIs. GUIs can be just as powerful in that sense, and most advanced web apps support keyboard navigation. My objection is mainly to the claim that TUIs are beautiful, and to the effort of bringing their design to the web. But this is ultimately down to personal preferences, and others may disagree.

Its true in theory, but it does not work well in practice because: 1. Developers have to make an extra effort (and require time) to do it right 2. People are much less likely to learn the keyboard shortcuts If you designed a GUI to be keyboard first then it might work as you say, but I cannot think of any real life examples of that. I think people need to TUI look to push them to use keyboards.

Every graphical PoS system i used in retail was a keyboard-first GUI

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

#159

Post by rollcat » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:28 AM UTC

queenkjuul wrote: post #154

sva_ wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By contrast, on macOS it's Cmd-Q; on Windows, it's Alt-F4; and so on. Innovation happens on stable foundations, not by pulling rugs. That's the window manager of the respective systems though. On i3, I can also kill any window by pressing Option-Shift-q. But that's more like the sledgehammer approach and not how I'd close a text editor on any system ...

Well to be pedantic, no, macOS Cmd-Q is quite distinct from closing the window

Agreed, macOS has different and distinct paradigms from Windows, KDE, or Gnome. But they're (for the most part) more internally consistent.

Say I want to keep the music playing when I close the player window. Other systems have to hack around it by e.g. using the status bar; on macOS it follows from the first principles.