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TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

tui.studio

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Re: TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

#191

Post by dec0dedab0de »

zabzonk wrote: post #165
jvanderbot wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. A TUI runs in a text session. A GUI runs in a graphics session. A terminal emulator emulates a text session in a graphics session - and allows you to run TUI/CLI tools. This is apparently controversial?

> TUI runs in a text session. A GUI runs in a graphics session What do you mean by this? I have never heard these terms before. I can launch and interact with a GUI from a text application, or a text application from a GUI.

It feels like a reference to DOS graphics mode.

Re: TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

#192

Post by majkinetor »

boca_honey wrote: post #175
stldev wrote: post #128

Ignore the haters. This is an excellent idea, I'm getting some old Borland vibes. Keep it up, can't wait to see where it goes!

Ignore the haters, sure. But don't ignore the well argumented criticism that you're getting from an overwhelming majority of your peers, as it's happening right now. >can't wait to see where it goes! Fall into this toxic positivity nonsense at your own peril.

Toxic positivity? At your own peril? OMFG.

Let's imagine one do. What do you think can actually happen that is so negative? Toxic TUI will hunt you in dreams?

Re: TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

#193

Post by mikkupikku »

reaperducer wrote: post #125
drakythe wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TUI means "Terminal User Interface" or "Text User Interface" A GUI that is built with Text, and intended to be used in a Terminal, is what a TUI is, colloquially AND definitionally. What do you think qualifies as a TUI?

I've been using TUIs since PR1MEOS mini-mainframes in the early 1980's, I know what I'm talking about. The issue is not the text. It's the WIMP interface.

Define TUI. I'm genuinely curious what it means in your context.

Re: TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

#194

Post by tracker1 »

duskdozer wrote: post #105
coldpie wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a shame Wayland dropped this. It... really isn't. Like you said, remote X was barely usable even over an entirely local network. Most applications these days are also not designed for it, using loads of bitmap graphics instead of efficient, low-level primitives. So you end up being just one tiny step away from simply streaming a video of your windows. We have better tools for doing things remotely these days,…

Like what? X forwarding has pretty much always been the thing most likely to work for me and I haven't been able to find any equivalent.

IIRC, it's not that secure though.. I'm really surprised people didn't do more things like send animated skulls to people's desktops.

Re: TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

#195

Post by mikkupikku »

tartoran wrote: post #96
clickety_clack wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drawing a “nonsense” line between TUIs and GUIs is pretty arbitrary, it’s all pixels on a screen at the end of the day. People like the TUI vibe, and that’s a good enough reason to make and use them.

I love TUIs but one main reason for that is that they're keyboard centric. If I have to use the mouse it kills it for me, if both work then it's fine. I hope that modern TUI makers keep this in mind. What's great about the keyboard centric is that with a few keystrokes/shortcuts it's very easy to do repeatable work and takes less energy than hunting boxes to click on with the mouse.

TUIs aren't more inherently keyboard driven than well constructed GUIs. You can easily make a keyboard driven GUI that has all the shortcuts you'd add to a TUI. (Just don't let the "UX design experts" near it.)

Re: TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

#196

Post by ralferoo »

gambiter wrote: post #87
reaperducer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a TUI if it uses text to build those elements. No. All you've done is make a low-resolution GUI.

Yeah, that's the point. Why did you think you needed to say it? It's a GUI that works over SSH. There is a very valid use case for that.

I assume his point is that making stuff that assumes a mouse makes for a bad text-based UI. Absolutely fine if everything is controllable via the keyboard, e.g. if the tabs were labelled F1-Fn and they function keys switched them, or they had an underlined letter and Ctrl+letter switched focus to it, or whatever.

But if this thing requires you to just tab a lot through lots of pointless and rarely used fields to get to a "button" so you can activate it, because it's really all designed to be used with a mouse, then it's a bad text-based UI.

There are some incredibly good text-based UIs around, some going back to mainframe stuff from the 70s. Most of them are optimised for speed of control via keyboard rather than for looking pretty. Almost none of them would be quicker to use with a mouse.

Re: TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

#197

Post by nine_k »

trollbridge wrote: post #23

I don’t want to be a curmudgeon, but why not just use CSS, HTML, React, etc. at this point? You could choose a style that looks like a TUI.

But will it render in a terminal over ssh?

(I know, I know, port forwarding should work for a web app.)

Re: TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

#198

Post by nine_k »

tracker1 wrote: post #180
zabzonk wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TUI runs in a text session. A GUI runs in a graphics session What do you mean by this? I have never heard these terms before. I can launch and interact with a GUI from a text application, or a text application from a GUI.

It makes far more sense in the context of effectively a remote session or dumb terminal serial connection. Your "terminal" application is only emulating a text mode environment inside a gui, typically... you can ctrl+alt+F2 - F5 in a lot of Liknux's to switch to a terminal session if you want, but that's not what people tend to actually use. Beyond this, without remote X properly configured, again, most don't and pro…

A remote GUI application now runs in a special client called a web browser; it's a recent development, barely 35 years old.

Re: TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

#199

Post by dec0dedab0de »

ralferoo wrote: post #196
gambiter wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's the point. Why did you think you needed to say it? It's a GUI that works over SSH. There is a very valid use case for that.

I assume his point is that making stuff that assumes a mouse makes for a bad text-based UI. Absolutely fine if everything is controllable via the keyboard, e.g. if the tabs were labelled F1-Fn and they function keys switched them, or they had an underlined letter and Ctrl+letter switched focus to it, or whatever. But if this thing requires you to just tab a lot through lots of pointless and rarely used fields to get…

absolutely, but it's still a TUI. Just like if you made a GUI that didn't have any mouse support and needed all keyboard shortcuts, it wouldn't stop being a GUI.

Re: TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

#200

Post by mikkupikku »

eterps wrote: post #48
mikkupikku wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If you think the 'mouse-clickable' aspect is bothering me, you missed my point entirely.

The only thing you actually managed to complain about was clickable tabs, buttons and checkboxes. Besides that, what it exactly do you object to, the design vibes? The only reason to be making a TUI in 2026 is as form of personal expression, so your preferred design vibes are no more valid than the OP's.
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