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spankaleeyesterday at 8:57 PM4 repliesview on HN

I really don't get terminal UIs that try to rebuild GUI-like functionality. Don't we think that computer interfaces should get better? We're not limited to a grid of characters to pretend to draw lines and shapes with anymore. You can't even display an image in a terminal without a non-standard terminal like Kitty or iTerm.

It's just a shame that we don't have a great cross-platform, streamed, UI system. The web is great in it's own ways, but clearly something could be a lot better for this purpose. Flutter's ok, but not on-demand enough and too married to Dart.


Replies

whartungyesterday at 9:04 PM

This is because of the failure of the modern GUI environment.

They want a GUI, but, instead, they have to resort to something like this. A GUI in a TUI.

They want something portable. They want something that can run remotely. They want something they can run more safely than having to expose a socket. They don't want to have to bring up an entire desktop.

Rootless windows are effectively dead. That leaves web interfaces (and all of their issues) or doing a TUI, where all you need is an SSH connection that everyone already has.

In the past you could slap something together with Tcl/Tk, and just launch the window over X Windows. That's not so easy today, and no one is running remote X anyway.

The LCD is SSH, and these are the only things that fit.

show 3 replies
sys_64738yesterday at 11:33 PM

It's for speed over SSH text is fast. Graphical redrawing of RDP/VNC/whatever is just slower and tedious in the long run.

zozbot234yesterday at 10:00 PM

> It's just a shame that we don't have a great cross-platform, streamed, UI system.

It's called the web/Jupyter. And no, web-driven UI doesn't have to be heavyweight either, any more than HN is.

worikyesterday at 9:39 PM

i am experimenting with TUI/GUI.

My motivation is avoiding all the piles and piles of extra software dependencies that X and/or Wayland bring in.

In addition (but might only be relevant in my niche platform) is that Wayland is buggy and X is deprecated and unmaintained making making the GUI work there a constant struggle.

Time will tell if it is an improvement