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Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

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Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#171

Post by Thaxll »

WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #95

I really disagree with the authors definition of minimal. Terminal emulators have such a minimal user interface as it is it's a bit boggling that I have to make the case for the following "bloat" that other terminal emulators have. I need scrollback because I do occasionally pick up my mouse and grab things that have scrolled off the screen. Tmux doesn't help with this but maybe there is some magic that I don't know…

Yes, "tabs and scrollback are unnecessary" seriously, must be some sort of a joke, I work all day long in a terminal and tabs are a must have.

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#172

Post by shmel »

WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #95

I really disagree with the authors definition of minimal. Terminal emulators have such a minimal user interface as it is it's a bit boggling that I have to make the case for the following "bloat" that other terminal emulators have. I need scrollback because I do occasionally pick up my mouse and grab things that have scrolled off the screen. Tmux doesn't help with this but maybe there is some magic that I don't know…

I switched to tmux a few years ago and never looked back. What is your problem with mouse? I have quite basic tmux config, very basic terminal emulator (st) and enjoy mouse scrolling even in nested tmux scenarios. Selection is done with vim keybindings which is much faster than mouse especially if you scroll and look for something visually.

I can relate to your feelings. In the beginning I was _very_ skeptical about running tmux locally. But very quickly I reconfigured tmux as I felt and stopped noticing at all if I work locally or remotely. Everything is very smooth and pleasant since then.

The only bad thing I remember: default tmux keybindings suck. I just redefined almost everything.

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#174

Post by netheril96 »

jwilm wrote: post #160
atombender wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Features like ... are better provided by a terminal multiplexer I would strongly argue that this thinking is putting the cart before the horse. I don't use tmux, nor do I want to (though occasionally I have to use screen as a hack to keep programs running on remote servers, and I hate every second of it). Solutions like tmux arguably exist because terminals have poor UIs, and the terminal protocol is too weak to fo…

Thank you for the thoughtful comment. There's been a lot more pushback on the scrolling decision than I had anticipated. It's not something I want in my terminal, but it seems that a simple feature like this is essential for others. Perhaps I should reconsider. I worry that a "simple" feature like this may be overly complex internally. Performance with large amounts of output is also a concern. At least if we were to…

> Performance with large amounts of output is also a concern.

Frankly, removing two very important features for a lot of people (me included) and then claiming highest performance feels a bit like cheating.

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#175

Post by juandazapata »

shmel wrote: post #172
WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #95

I really disagree with the authors definition of minimal. Terminal emulators have such a minimal user interface as it is it's a bit boggling that I have to make the case for the following "bloat" that other terminal emulators have. I need scrollback because I do occasionally pick up my mouse and grab things that have scrolled off the screen. Tmux doesn't help with this but maybe there is some magic that I don't know…

I switched to tmux a few years ago and never looked back. What is your problem with mouse? I have quite basic tmux config, very basic terminal emulator (st) and enjoy mouse scrolling even in nested tmux scenarios. Selection is done with vim keybindings which is much faster than mouse especially if you scroll and look for something visually. I can relate to your feelings. In the beginning I was _very_ skeptical about…

I agree. I also have a very basic tmux/vim setup and I can scroll, copy/paste and even resize tmux panels with the mouse.

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#176

Post by [deleted] »

xxpor wrote: post #142
dragonne wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another Rust terminal emulator project, notty[1], aims to do this. Downthread the author mentions that the projects are looking at collaborating. [1]: https://github.com/withoutboats/notty

It's too bad notty is licenced under the AGPL. That basically guarantees 0 usage at any sort of bigco.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#177

Post by jfoutz »

elihu wrote: post #112
WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #95

I really disagree with the authors definition of minimal. Terminal emulators have such a minimal user interface as it is it's a bit boggling that I have to make the case for the following "bloat" that other terminal emulators have. I need scrollback because I do occasionally pick up my mouse and grab things that have scrolled off the screen. Tmux doesn't help with this but maybe there is some magic that I don't know…

Yeah, that was my reaction. > Features like GUI-based configuration, tabs and scrollback are unnecessary. The latter features are better provided by a terminal multiplexer like tmux. This seems kind of like saying "everyone should use their computer the same way I do". I don't use tmux; maybe I should learn to use it. However, I seem to be getting along fine without it, and no scroll back is a deal-breaker for me. Th…

> This seems kind of like saying "everyone should use their computer the same way I do".

People do have that attitude from time to time, in this case i'd phrase it more like "no one seems to use their computer the way i want to, so i wrote some software"

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#178

Post by arandomcoder »

nopreserveroot wrote: post #163
xxpor wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too bad notty is licenced under the AGPL. That basically guarantees 0 usage at any sort of bigco.

That is not how Copyleft software licenses work at all. All the AGPL gurantees is that 'Bigco' must contribute back to the community any modifications they make to the software.

Exactly! How many bigco's have a terminal emulator incorporated into a product? If you're just using this to run tmux, vim, etc. the AGPL's strengthened sharing provisions aren't going to affect you at all :-)

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#179

Post by chongli »

the8472 wrote: post #151
jwilm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glyphs are rasterized once and stored in a texture atlas. When rendering a glyph, the fragment shader pulls from that texture. Once loaded, the glyph stays loaded for the duration of the program.

Don't combining characters, ligatures or scripts that fuse characters lead to a combinatorical explosion? can it handle zalgo?

Terminal emulators tend to prefer fixed-width fonts so you don't really have to worry about those too much.

Re: Show HN: Alacritty, a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator written in Rust

#180

Post by arandomcoder »

netheril96 wrote: post #174
jwilm wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the thoughtful comment. There's been a lot more pushback on the scrolling decision than I had anticipated. It's not something I want in my terminal, but it seems that a simple feature like this is essential for others. Perhaps I should reconsider. I worry that a "simple" feature like this may be overly complex internally. Performance with large amounts of output is also a concern. At least if we were to…

> Performance with large amounts of output is also a concern. Frankly, removing two very important features for a lot of people (me included) and then claiming highest performance feels a bit like cheating.

I respectfully disagree. Alacritty follows the Unix philosophy of doing one thing, and doing it well. I used to think that terminal scrollback and tabs were great ideas -- but switching to tmux changed my mind completely. Tmux is so much more capable for managing your session history. The terminal's tab and scrollback features can never match this. They're just bloat :p
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