Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

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My local editor is vim in a terminal. :)

It seems like TermKit could handle curses applications fairly straightforwardly and without modifying those applications. Just set TERM=xterm, and when you see the xterm initialization string, either open a new tab or define a region in the existing tab, and emulate an xterm within that region. (If you use a region in the existing tab, it could have a control attached to it that splits that region out into a new tab.) That would allow existing programs like vim, htop, powertop, and mutt to work perfectly within your terminal.

Personally, I'd like to use this like an enhanced standard terminal. So, for instance, I'd like to have the standard ls output rather than something graphical, but I'd like the filenames in the ls output to act as links, so I can click to open or hover for a preview. And while I want the standard cat command, I'd also like to have the command that displays something inline in the terminal (with the above-mentioned control to move it to a new tab).

> I'd like to use this like an enhanced standard terminal

Same here. Just adding a tiny little bit of enhancement without changing anything in the standard behavior could be a bettter idea. Examples:

  - ls output is pure text but hoverable (parent's idea)
  - add a way to see thumbnails of pics in ls
  - drag and drop files in the pwd

In the article the author says "The interaction is strictly limited to a linear flow of keystrokes, always directed at only one process" and take it as a limitation. From my point of view, when doing geek work on big machines, I need to drive a "linear flow of keystroke" in the machine. It is the way to have a deterministic behavior. It is the way to be able to script my work. I feel empowered by the control I have on what the machine does. Everything else (ie Windows, Mac UI) feel like a console game to me, in the sense that I give away my full control on the machine in exchange of impressive graphics, ease of interaction and safety-for-kids.

I agree with this.

Where I work, everybody has linux development machines, but use their machine of choice as their actual workstation. This either forces people to use vim/emacs through SSH, or set up some local file sharing so that they can use their bloated eclipse thing.

Personally, I've spent months each with a few of the popular editors around, and I fall back on vim just because my .vimrc has been tuned so much over the past few years that it's just painful to use anything else. I don't even care if the editors have more features.

Now, if I had a fancier terminal, where my mouse click picked the right vim split view instance, or highlighting text in a split view vim selected only text in that window, instead of the whole line of the terminal, I would use that. MacVim is pretty much the perfect tool for me, but it's local and not remote (and also not inside a terminal that I can split up with screen).

You might want to do

:help mouse

All of the things you mentioned are supported and work with most terminal emulators (tested with xterm, gnome-terminal, iterm2 on OSX)

> highlighting text in a split view vim selected only text in that window

Try to control-select in the terminal. Works with my Gnome term 2.

> vim/emacs through SSH

We work like that too, and I see only advantages to this set-up, the least being forcing everyone to learn find, grep, vim. These powerful tools increase productivity but have a high barrier of entry, so best is to have no other choice.

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