Go Terminal_ Elegant and Efficient Linux Terminal • Hacker News Board

Re: Go Terminal_ Elegant and Efficient Linux Terminal

#51

Post by alsetmusic » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 3:53 AM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #49

robmccoll wrote: post #31

Just what I've always wanted from a terminal - things I can only do with a GUI and mouse. /sarcasm This product seems to fundamentally misunderstand people that use terminals. Perhaps it would do better to instead become more of a thing that puts quick GUI wrappers around terminal commands and tries to parse the output and present it in a pretty GUI way for people who'd prefer not to get their hands dirty? Otherwise,…

> Just what I've always wanted from a terminal - things I can only do with a GUI and mouse. /sarcasm Just what this conversation needs - someone who fundamentally doesn't get that web browsers and their derivatives have more affordances for accessibility than a native terminal interface ever did. > This product seems to fundamentally misunderstand people that use terminals. > Either way, why is there a group of peopl…

> Just what this conversation needs - someone who fundamentally doesn't get that web browsers and their derivatives have more affordances for accessibility than a native terminal interface ever did.

I do not have sight impairment, but I'm quite certain that I could navigate a fixed number of keystrokes more reliably than I could operate a mouse. If I were listening to synthesized speech dictating on-screen output, I know that the option that makes the most sense is four taps back and one up. Finding that with a mouse would be unnecessarily complex by comparison.

Re: Go Terminal_ Elegant and Efficient Linux Terminal

#52

Post by guessmyname » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 4:27 AM UTC

eberkund wrote: post #45

guessmyname wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why is there a group of people that [want to wrap everything] in HTML/CSS/JS I believe you already know the answer to your own question, because to be honest I think the answer is pretty obvious; but in case you are actually curious about the answer here is what I think (mostly sarcasm, don't expect much): The majority of people making these applications are web developers who are frustrated by the difficulty of le…

Well there's Slack and VS Code just off the top of my head

Slack started as a website, then created the desktop and mobile clients, so if I stick to my statement "accomplish anything" I would still keep Slack out of the list because the "desktop" client does not provides anything special over the original web interface. About Visual Studio Code, I don't know what have Microsoft accomplished with that project yet, but I will give you a point for that just because.

Re: Go Terminal_ Elegant and Efficient Linux Terminal

#53

Post by guessmyname » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 4:33 AM UTC

nomel wrote: post #50

guessmyname wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be fooled by the name, this application is not written in Go, that is just a random word that they chose for the name. The application was written in HTML and bundled with a webview powered by CEF (probably Electron). Just download the application and execute `strings goterminal | grep chromium` and you will see what I am talking about; again, this has 0% Go code. EDIT: Here is the list of 720 NPM packages used…

> this thing is ~620MB of HTML + JS + Electron Is it 620MB of source text? I'm not a web guy, so I literally I can't understand this, unless, since it's a web tech, 30 minutes of cat videos are required in the source.

Yes and no; there are some binary files too, but there are ~534MB of JavaScript code mixed with additional assets. Once you extract the content from the archive (using the tar.gz version) you will find a directory with multiple sub-directories and files that roughtly weighs 636MB distributed like this:

    9.1M - content_shell.pak
    60M  - goterminal
    9.8M - icudtl.dat
    4.0K - INSTALL
    2.5M - libffmpeg.so
    18M  - libnode.so
    20K  - LICENSE
    352K - locales
    404K - natives_blob.bin
    536M - resources
    604K - snapshot_blob.bin

The directory "resources" contains the ASAR file plus another sub-directory named "app" that contains the assets and the "node_modules" tree, this directory alone weighs 534MB because of the 720 NPM packages required by the application.

Re: Go Terminal_ Elegant and Efficient Linux Terminal

#54

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 4:46 AM UTC

gnufied wrote: post #28

ubertaco wrote: post #3

It's a paid terminal emulator, written (by all appearances) in some kind of Electron-like (so a much much higher footprint), with a GUI for what can already be done via aliases, functions, and scripts. And no telling how well $TERM detection works (show me vim! Show me something that wants 256 colors!) If it was free, I might still not use it, because my terminal emulator needs to be lightweight and bulletproof, not…

This is how Emacs looks in it - http://imgur.com/E6cLkoF . Turning off the theme I am using fixes it, but many emacs shortcuts don't work.

[deleted]

Re: Go Terminal_ Elegant and Efficient Linux Terminal

#55

Post by Myrmornis » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 4:49 AM UTC

benbenolson wrote: post #15

nameless912 wrote: post #13

There's literally nothing about this I like. A terminal with a gradient background might look pretty for screenshots, but for long sessions it just adds to fatigue and makes text harder to read. "Saving your favorite commands" in a normal terminal involves writing an alias into your rc file, not a bunch of button clicks. Same goes for the whole "interactive flags" thing. Whoever made this clearly hates the terminal a…

I agree with each and every one of your comments; in addition, I would like to know how this project was created: what language it was made in, why the author found it necessary to create it, etc.

> why the author found it necessary to create it

That's unpleasant. This is a forum for programmers. Care to explain why you are criticizing a participant for programming?

Re: Go Terminal_ Elegant and Efficient Linux Terminal

#56

Post by Myrmornis » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 4:49 AM UTC

guessmyname wrote: post #19

benbenolson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with each and every one of your comments; in addition, I would like to know how this project was created: what language it was made in, why the author found it necessary to create it, etc.

> what language it was made in HTML + JavaScript + Electron Just download that archive, extract its content, and you will find the "goterminal" script that is basically an ASAR archive [1] with a copy of CEF [2] as the webview for the web application that they (for some unknown reason) decided to create. [1] https://github.com/electron/asar [2] https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef

> that they (for some unknown reason) decided to create.

That's unpleasant. This is a forum for programmers. Care to explain why you are criticizing a participant for programming?

Re: Go Terminal_ Elegant and Efficient Linux Terminal

#57

Post by _navaneethan » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 5:09 AM UTC

I was trying to install this .deb package with ubuntu software center. My system warns with the below message.

"This package is of bad quality:

The installation of a package which violates the quality standards isn't allowed. This could cause serious problems on your computer. Please contact the person or organisation who provided this package file and include the details beneath.

The package doesn't provide a valid Installed-Size control field. See Debian Policy 5.6.20."

Re: Go Terminal_ Elegant and Efficient Linux Terminal

#58

Post by 59nadir » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 5:15 AM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #46

jackmott wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HTML + JavaScript + Electron flips over table

Actually, let me unflip that table. I am desperate for someone to come along and realize that the current terminal interface is a perpetual train wreck, and that if we can break compatibility but end up with something better we should . Consider for a moment what a monumental task it is to make a simple ncurses menu and status bar in bash script. Consider for a second how trivial that could be made if each command li…

> Please, let's not pretend we'd not benefit massively from richer tooling here.

Absolutely nothing about this project or the way they went about building it shows any tendency towards richer tooling. A web interface also does not inherently enable richer tooling. You could implement this non-line oriented protocol entirely without 500+ MB of JS and the interpretation of that data could obviously be done without it too.

Edit:

While I understand your rants all over these threads (it doesn't inherently have to be inefficient and bloated), you've picked a strange submission to take these fights in. The software in question is in fact bloated, not compliant and is really only an interface to aliases.

Also, I would add: The proof is in the pudding. You seem to have made this a personal crusade, so I would urge you to make a decent PoC with these ideas to show the world.

Re: Go Terminal_ Elegant and Efficient Linux Terminal

#59

Post by nameless912 » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 5:20 AM UTC

icholy wrote: post #39

nameless912 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's what you do: in the middle of the night, sneak into all of your devs' offices and fuck with their xorg.conf's. Make them drop to command line only for a couple weeks (because we all know it takes at least that long to diagnose an xorg.conf....) and they'll learn. Oh they'll learn ;)

you're a terrible person

I also kick puppies and write one word commit messages.

Re: Go Terminal_ Elegant and Efficient Linux Terminal

#60

Post by 112233 » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 5:27 AM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #46

jackmott wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HTML + JavaScript + Electron flips over table

Actually, let me unflip that table. I am desperate for someone to come along and realize that the current terminal interface is a perpetual train wreck, and that if we can break compatibility but end up with something better we should . Consider for a moment what a monumental task it is to make a simple ncurses menu and status bar in bash script. Consider for a second how trivial that could be made if each command li…

How do you imagine scrollback/ history on such thing? Genuinely curious. Have seen a few projects attempting this, but having all of the output searchable is a very central feature of terminal, for me.