A desktop environment without graphics (tmux-like)
github.com
github.com
Also, if sixel support were added, it could support graphics. See:
https://github.com/taviso/wpunix/wiki/Terminals
If sixels somehow are already supported, then it does support graphics.
This DE looks quite a bit like DOS - or at least the UI seen via apps within DOS. I didn't care much for DOS back in the day...but now, i like it...of course it might be simple rose-colored nostalgia. :-)
I'm definitely getting Turbo Pascal 5 vibes. Not 6, though, because that added ASCII drop-shadows.
I see a drop shadow on a button; not sure if that specific console application had the button or if the button is part of the DE.
WordPerfect competed heavily with Microsoft Word back in the DOS days. I made money in high school with side jobs teaching people to use WordPefect for DOS, and making utilities to convert and process WordPerfect files for small businesses.
I wrote all of my high school papers on WordPerfect for the Amiga, which was basically just a straight port of the text-only DOS version.
Ha! I'd say it was more accurate to say that MS Word tried to compete with WordPerfect.
It was only with the rise of Windows that Word became a contender, and WordPerfect was relegated to trying to compete.
> a straight port of the text-only DOS version.
Just out of interest: WP was a Data General app. The DOS version was a port, as was the Amiga version, SCO Xenix, classic MacOS, all the others. The native app was a DG minicomputer program.
Part of its competitiveness in the pre-GUI era was that WordPerfect was very portable and the company ported it to almost every OS going, complete with its massive suite of state-of-the-art printer drivers.
If you were not using a DG Nova minicomputer then you were running a port.
But as GUIs became standard, they almost all included printing subsystems, using soft fonts rendered by the same code that rendered stuff on screen. Printers' own built-in fonts became irrelevant: GUIs just dumped bitmaps to the printer.
So WordPerfect's best-in-the-industry printer drivers, which supported every printer in the world and could make it do backflips, became irrelevant.
In my part of the world, on MSDOS, MS Word was not even in competition with WordPerfect.
It was only with the advent of Windows (more specifically, Win95) that MS Word started seeing non-fractional percentage of usage compared to WordPerfect 5.1
WP6 also ran in DOS but had a full fledged GUI. Ran a bit slow on the 486 but wow!
The penultimate DOS version of MS Word is freeware. MS released Word 5.5 as freeware as a Y2K fix for all previous versions.
It's quite usable. I've written articles using it.
You can run it under Linux or macOS easily using DOSemu, on 64-bit Windows with VDOS+.
I wrote about how, with a pic of it working:
https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/28/friday_foss_fest_runn...
Sadly, the last ever version, 6.0, is much better, with more keystrokes in common with Word 6 for Windows and Mac, and that's not freeware.
I use Tilde myself, which is very close.
https://github.com/gphalkes/tilde
I have written about it:
"Tilde, a text editor that doesn't work like it's 1976"
https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/17/tilde_text_editor/
Nobody got the gag in the title. 1976 was when Vi first appeared.
I really don't know why so many people are against having a bar with menus and using the arrows to navigate. It is intuitive and easy, that editor really hit the spot. Thank you for the tip.
- [x] Change tilling options
let mut menu = Menu::new("Tilling");
For example, I use `psql` in a split, and doing `C-c C-c` sends the statement in my current buffer (delineated with newlines) to `psql`. I do the same with all other console applications.
https://github.com/cosmos72/twin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_(windowing_system)
And both of them seem to re-implement their own, inferior, versions of the TurboVision text-mode "widget toolkit":
https://tvision.sourceforge.net/
https://github.com/magiblot/tvision
A merger could result in something greater than the sum of its parts.
I mean, I agree it'd be interesting. But useful? Compared to basically any form of GUI be it X11 or Wayland, the resource usage is I would think on the order of 1% as much, and maybe less.
Don't find details and trying the usual suspects didn't work.
Also, it was needed to install a missing library: sudo apt install libncursesw5-dev
(A note to Ubuntu users that browsh is incompatible with the default snap distribution of Firefox; you'll have to install it from a PPA.)
Yeah, they were great in 80s where HW was seriously underpowered. I run minimal IceWM and it looks and works great, and its quick :)
Maybe so...and, yes, somewhat it is utilizing lightweight options...however, more and more, i am using either bare GUIs or legit TUIs for less distraction...a sort of minimalism. I'd like to think that i could be super productive only using TUIs, because it might make me feel like some cool elite hacker...but i know that's not the case always. However, more and more I'm recently gravitating towards TUIs, or at least more minimal GUIs, for the semi-forced focus. I'm learning about myself more and more, and more buttons is not great.
Small example: my favorite GUI text editor is Kate (from KDE). i know it has bells and whistles, but since i keep things to a minimum, it sort of stays out of my way, and helps me write more - both prose and code, etc. What i have noticed over the decades of my usage of software is that for some areas - like writing - if i use more comprehensive tools - say, like VSCode - then i will keep playing with so many settings, and stuff gets in my way; i inadvertantly let myself get too distracted from getting stuff done. On the TUI side, i can use VIM, nano, micro, etc.and I'm quite productive as well. At least, that's what works for me. So, what you might call backwards, might be more like coming full circle for the productivity aspect, at least in ways that make sense for some people, not all of course. :-)
Most of my tools are TUI really, because its much esier to develop. Code reusability is huge. You wrote some nice interactive TList class? Cool, you can reuse it easly in other TUI projects.
Today world is a bit multitasking, so having TUI based Desktop is very limiting imo. Yeah, distractions.. Thats I think personal thing. I run old OS with 4 virtual desktops because one desktop is not really enough. Desktop 1 is generic. Desktop 2 is work. Desktop 3 is usually some Network Simulations I do. Desktop 2 and 3 usually have their own Xserver running, displaying stuff from remote servers. So, leaving GUI is not an option. Just use it smartly :)
And yeah, I use ViM ether in terminal or gViM (native Win32).
Excellent point; that is pretty hardcore! :-)
> ...I run old OS with 4 virtual desktops...
This is quite interesting, because i know a few acquaintences and friends who also use this approach of several desktops (each maybe with a dedicated app for example) to help them get really focused and productive! It seems to work for them really well...but i've never been able to have it click for me. I mean, i get the idea, and it sounds good...but for some reason it doesn't give me what i need...or, well, maybe its "out of sight, out of mind"...and then i forget about those other screens/desktops, etc. Of course, the possibility could absolutely be that i'm simply "holding it wrong"/using this approach in the wrong/less ideal way. :-)
TUIs are fine if they mean better thought-out command line interfaces, but I can't see the sense in then if they actively try to recreate GUIs.