Like many things in tech, the command line was created when nothing like it existed before and over time it has gained unique traits that make it appealing (SSHing, programs tending to be open source and cross platform, mouseless UIs, etc.) but also lack things that alternatives, for instance multiple font sizes. Thus the need to reinvent the wheel like this. I made this post Is the line between TUIs and GUIs blurring? What’s the difference in rendering and compute demand between them? which got 64 comments.
Same thing with the web really, a lot reinventing of the wheel of what OSes do, but there was nothing like it before where devices across the world communicate with each other, hence less need for things like sandboxing completely un-trusted code and a comprehensive app permission system (location, camera, etc.).
sxan@midwest.social 3 days ago
Ok, I’ll admit, I’m fascinated that you replied to me on Lemmy, but posted a link to a Reddit post. Are we communicating through a bridge, or do you just have so much time you can afford to be on multiple forum-style social media sites?
Luckily, Reddit isn’t yet blocking the VPN exit node I’ve been using for the past week, but with any given node there’s a 50/50 chance I can’t see Reddit because they block VPNs pretty aggressively.
But, back to the content of your message. You’re absolutely right: there is a trend of terminals slowly becoming graphics servers. I admit that whichever terminal I’m using in a quarter (I bop around a little bit, once every 4-6 months), I’ll stick with it longer if it:
There’s also a trend for terminals to include multiplexing, duplicating what tmux does, but tabs and navigation are wasted memory and code. Multiplexing in the terminal is, IMHO, the wrong approach; it doesn’t protect my session if the terminal crashes, or the WM crashes, or the GUI session crashes; and it doesn’t allow me to log out and back in, maybe to change WMs; and it doesn’t allow me to connect and continue from another computer. But, ultimately, I’m going to be using tmux for all of my remote servers and computers anyway, through ssh; why have a completely separate modality and mental model for the local terminal? So, for me, it’s just cruft in the terminal - extra code paths to contain bugs, extra memory use
Ligatures really improve things, though, and with sixel and character combining, you’re really starting to veer into “display manager” space, as you say. Sixel -or Kitti’s protocol, or whatever that other one is - reduce the number of times I have to exit the terminal and reach for a GUI tool. But as you say, it’s just blurring the boundaries.
Still, this feature is a step beyond. Ligatures and combining characters still kept things in a grid. Ligatures in particular just replaced 2 characters with a single-width, different glyph. Sixel graphics are graphics - we leave the realm of text behind, at that point. Multi-height, multi-width characters cross a boundary.
It’ll be useful, though. This is why I’m torn. I’d love to see terminal markdown renderers be able to show proper super and subscript characters, and this would allow that. I only wonder whether the added complexity will be worth the little bit of extra eye-candy.
TheTwelveYearOld@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Bruh I’m not spending all day on social media, I just have accounts on multiple sites and it doesn’t take long to either post on one site or crosspost.
Thanks for the detailed reply though.
sxan@midwest.social 3 days ago
I was just curious about the first part! We live in a world of Federation, and bridges are becoming more common. I honestly wanted to know if someone had hooked up a bridge between some Lemmy instance and Reddit.
There are some bridge bots cross-posting pictures (SFW, you pervs), with a message suggesting you contact the Reddit author and suggest they “take ownership” of the cross-post bot for that Reddit account. I didn’t know if this was one of those.
The detailed response is because I don’t waste time on Reddit, and so can afford to write essays.