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.

▲

whartung 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	tonyarkles 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> That's not so easy today, and no one is running remote X anyway. I was quite recently, but even then remote X is missing a really big usability piece: keeping a long-running application open on the host and periodically connecting to it from a remote node (concretely: connecting to my server from my laptop). VNC/RDP/etc all do this at the desktop level, but they're pretty mediocre experience-wise. tmux gives me this for terminal applications without really any compromises. I run tmux for local terminals as well as remote terminals; the hotkeys are all deep muscle memory at this point. It just works.
	▲	cedws 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Agreed. I dread GUI development, hence I never build GUIs. If there were a library for my language of choice that worked multi-platform and used native components then I’d be interested.
	▲	einpoklum 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> That's not so easy today, and no one is running remote X anyway. If you: 1. Have a low-latency connection to a decent machine, and 2. Are on a machine that's weak, or isn't yours, or that you don't fully control (e.g. employer forces you to run Windows) ... then you live in remote X apps my friend.

▲

zozbot234 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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.

▲

sys_64738 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

▲

worik 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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