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TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

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Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#21

Post by unconed »

telemachos wrote: post #18

After seeing something about this yesterday, I said on Rstat.us/Twitter that I thought it was pretty but disagreed with the whole premise. I still do, I think, but I'm very impressed with how reasonable Steven's response was. He wrote me and asked pretty much "Why?" I said essentially "Unix philosophy" and attached the link that ended up in his blog post.[1] He wrote back and at some point he wrote this post, probabl…

To address some of your concerns:

- Monospace fonts for code is definitely in. Try catting a .js file, it will get syntax highlighted. Most likely, it doesn't recognize the mime type of your file. It's using the old mime.types DB + some custom additions... also, the highlighter I'm using only has so many languages defined. I looked for the most comprehensive / least fail one.

- Regarding vim... I admit I just don't like those tools. I can operate vim just fine, but I hate every second of it. I would much rather be able to type "edit file", have it open up the file in my local editor, and sync back saved changes.

- No scripting language... except the whole thing is built on Node.js... :) What's not discussed in the article is that the UI is not tied to the shell at all. You can just as easily make a back-end worker for SQL, for SFTP, for a scripting console, etc. I haven't worked out how this works in the UI, but the protocol supports it. Session types can be multiplexed freely over one socket. Basically, for scripting, I think the command line is a shitty place for it, and we should just switch to using a real language in its own little console when needed.

- Regarding habits... it's not my goal to break any without reason, just to reduce the number of keystrokes. Consider it a bug. Regarding quotes... the idea is WYSIWYG. If there is a visual divider, it's a separate argument. Otherwise, it gets passed as a single unit. This may sometimes be buggy, the Unix command support is 1 week old, and I hack on this very late at night.

Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#22

Post by maratd »

telemachos wrote: post #18

After seeing something about this yesterday, I said on Rstat.us/Twitter that I thought it was pretty but disagreed with the whole premise. I still do, I think, but I'm very impressed with how reasonable Steven's response was. He wrote me and asked pretty much "Why?" I said essentially "Unix philosophy" and attached the link that ended up in his blog post.[1] He wrote back and at some point he wrote this post, probabl…

That's all fine. There's probably a ton of other things it can't do. I certainly can't use it for my work and I spend a ton of time behind a terminal. At the same time, don't you see the potential?

It probably won't be "production ready" for years, but I would hate to think that 20 years from now we're still typing into a dinky terminal that has been around since the 70s! We won't get the next-best-thing down the road unless we start working on it now. TermKit is the first step.

Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#25

Post by unconed »

unconed wrote: post #21
telemachos wrote: post #18

After seeing something about this yesterday, I said on Rstat.us/Twitter that I thought it was pretty but disagreed with the whole premise. I still do, I think, but I'm very impressed with how reasonable Steven's response was. He wrote me and asked pretty much "Why?" I said essentially "Unix philosophy" and attached the link that ended up in his blog post.[1] He wrote back and at some point he wrote this post, probabl…

To address some of your concerns: - Monospace fonts for code is definitely in. Try catting a .js file, it will get syntax highlighted. Most likely, it doesn't recognize the mime type of your file. It's using the old mime.types DB + some custom additions... also, the highlighter I'm using only has so many languages defined. I looked for the most comprehensive / least fail one. - Regarding vim... I admit I just don't l…

And on another note... it's been hilarious how people have been questioning my professional credentials just because I want to make something more usable.

I've implemented over a dozen RFCs, can match regexps with the best of them and do know which end of a pipe does what ;).

Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#26

Post by unconed »

barrkel wrote: post #17
mikemaccana wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, ls isn't showing you the file type, and will never show you content. And you're mixing presentation with content, which is poor engineering - see the guys coming up with regexs to handle time because the only way time is presented to them is as text, Good shells have prompted object pipeline based tools before - PoSH is only a few years old. And it's still possible for older tools to run with no de…

ls shows file type by coloring - check out ~/.dircolors/dircolors/LS_COLORS and ls --color=auto - and kind by extension - ls -F. Showing things like thumbnails seems to me to be of limited use. When I want to see the directory in all its glory, I'll do the moral equivalent of "cygstart/open/whatever .". That'll give me a proper shell window designed for viewing content with thumbnails etc., rather than trying to stic…

Consider these bugs to be fixed, not irreparable complaints ;).

Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#27

Post by wladimir »

unconed wrote: post #25
unconed wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To address some of your concerns: - Monospace fonts for code is definitely in. Try catting a .js file, it will get syntax highlighted. Most likely, it doesn't recognize the mime type of your file. It's using the old mime.types DB + some custom additions... also, the highlighter I'm using only has so many languages defined. I looked for the most comprehensive / least fail one. - Regarding vim... I admit I just don't l…

And on another note... it's been hilarious how people have been questioning my professional credentials just because I want to make something more usable. I've implemented over a dozen RFCs, can match regexps with the best of them and do know which end of a pipe does what ;).

I'm also a bit disappointed on how most people here react. I personally think your idea is great and pretty futuristic. I would certainly use a tool like this. Also it's open source so if a specific detail (such as the font) bugs them it can simply be changed.

I've had similar ideas (based on Python) but never got around to executing them. Keep up the good work and don't let the angry bearded UNIX dinosaurs get to you :)

Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#28

Post by andrewcooke »

it's curious this is on the front page at the same time as oh (or was that on reddit? - can't seem to find it now). https://github.com/michaelmacinnis/oh

both allow the shell to use structured data. i like the idea of using json myself (not that keen on the gui parts of the implementation, but moving pipes to something with more structure seems like a good idea). did plan 9 do anything similar?

Re: TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement

#30

Post by unconed »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #12

Maybe I'm an old fogey but I'll stick with xterm and iterm. Having a terminal where I can have the same experience whether logged into a *nix box, on osx, or sshed into a remote server is far more appealing than being able to cat images or having a pretty progress bar. If I want to make json more readable I can just pipe it through one of the many json formatting scripts. It might just be me but I find cocoa to be a…

Note: the goal is to be able to run TermKit transparently over SSH. Maybe even do an "apt-get install termkit-backend" for you if you wish.
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