Plain text has been around for decades and it’s here to stay

unsung.aresluna.org

171–172 of 172 posts

Re: Plain text has been around for decades and it’s here to stay

#171

Post by safety1st » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 7:54 AM UTC

TheEaterOfSouls wrote: post #92

safety1st wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The peak of TUIs is now. Take a look at Omarchy, an entire operating system built around terminals and config files, it's nirvana. I can only imagine how much farther down this road things may go as we enter a world where the primary interface is conversation with the machine in text. I'm sure I'll get downvoted for that last part because Reddit -- (cough) I mean Hacker News - hates AI, but I'm genuinely excited for…

I'm imagining a TTY-like interface that you can simultaneously type into, speak and gesture at, and whatever else I'm not thinking of (maybe with the "shell" creating a list of suggestions/ anticipating future tasks in the background based on voice input?) Doubt it would be at all practical, if only because the keyboard as a primary input device might not be as much of a thing when you can generate most code/text, bu…

To be fair, ShellGPT does a lot of heavy lifting for me. Weird thing I need to do, ask it a question in my terminal, it suggests a bash one-liner.

I haven't looked into voice/dictation yet. I'm dumber when I talk and smarter when I type so while it's super cool I imagine the net productivity gain may be a little overstated. Probably pretty straightforward with OAI's API.

Re: Plain text has been around for decades and it’s here to stay

#172

Post by pwinnski » Fri, May 01, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

gf000 wrote: post #136

pwinnski wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, of course sometimes an image conveys things better than a thousand words. But a very large percentage of what most people do with computers is primarily text, with more images in ads than useful content. By and large GUIs don't use images to convey information better, they just make text worse. Modern terminal software supports displaying images, for what it's worth.

> Modern terminal software supports displaying images, for what it's worth. In a worse, and dramatically overcomplicated way. Like it's kind of funny that largely the same people that is all for this supposed ultra minimalism would be celebrating a Rube Goldberg way of doing graphical interfaces? (Because in the end it is a graphical interface).

Sorry for the late response; it's been a busy week.

As a user, I don't care how complicated is the means of displaying images in a terminal session. I would only want to do so when I'm deep in a text-oriented context and there is a suddenly a need for an image. Not a chart or a graph, but an actual image. As a user, whatever contortions are necessary at that point are fine, because it's an unusual circumstance.

I hope that makes sense.

Post reply on HN