[HN Gopher] Cool-retro-term: A terminal emulator which mimics th...
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Cool-retro-term: A terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode
display
Author : marcodiego
Score : 209 points
Date : 2022-03-19 14:44 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Maybe some missing features:
|
| Screen burn. Leave it on for a few months displaying the same
| stuff and get a grey burned in shadow forever showing 'Login:' at
| the top left of your terminal.
|
| Gauss distortion: Bring a strong magnet close to your terminal to
| have all the letters suck to one side and stay there for days.
|
| TEMPEST fun: Broadcast the contents of your badly shielded screen
| to another badly shielded screen in the same room (yes that's
| real and something I've actually seen).
| pugworthy wrote:
| Fallout terminal hacking mode?
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| aaaaand will that enlarge the image if the overall brightness-of-
| all-pixels on screen gets higher (either by turning the knob, or,
| you know, type lots of text ) ?
| coinerone wrote:
| Combine it with Bucklespring
| (https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring) and it gets even better.
| bargle0 wrote:
| You can still buy actual buckling spring keyboards from
| Unicomp.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| There is also a font called vt220 somewhere out there that gives
| you the look and feel of the gorgeous DEC VT 220 terminals. If I
| can find it I'll post the link here
| Falkon1313 wrote:
| There are also a lot of PC/BIOS fonts here:
| https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/
| cellularmitosis wrote:
| this one perhaps? https://github.com/svofski/glasstty
| bitwize wrote:
| There's one called DEC Terminal Modern that may work better
| with cool-retro-term. It's a vector font that doesn't have
| the scanlines in the font, so won't clash with the scanline
| effects the terminal emulator provides.
| weinzierl wrote:
| I toyed with both, _Cathode_ on the Mac as well as _Cool-retro-
| term_ on Linux, for video production. The effect and quality is
| exactly what I want. My only pain is that they both don 't fit
| well into my workflow.
|
| Does anyone know a plugin for _Blender_ or _Natron_ that can
| produce a high quality realistic CRT effect?
|
| Preferably with similar flexibility and parameters as _Cathode_
| or _Cool-retro-term_.
|
| All the plugins I found were very limited and most of them didn't
| even attempt to look realistic. For me quality and realism are
| key, convenient use in a compositor is also important. I don't
| care about rendering times.
|
| Things I found during my research that look useful and cool but
| also don't quite fit into a more traditional compositor workflow:
|
| * _CRT-Royale_ [1] is a GPU based real-time CRT shader that seems
| to go into ridiculous detail.
|
| * _FFmpeg CRT Transform_ [2] is a purely FFmpeg based CRT effect.
|
| [1] https://docs.libretro.com/shader/crt_royale/
|
| [2] https://github.com/viler-int10h/FFmpeg-CRT-transform
| nineteen999 wrote:
| > Does anyone know a plugin for Blender or Natron that can
| produce a high quality realistic CRT effect?
|
| Sounds like a pretty niche scratch-an-itch thing for somebody
| to write. If you know Python the Blender Python API isn't that
| hard to learn, although it does tend to change sometimes,
| especially between major versions, and sometimes minor versions
| as well.
| bitwize wrote:
| I'm glad to see you're interested in quality and authenticity
| in your video productions. A lot of major Hollywood studios
| just don't give a crap, and composite some green text in
| Courier or Consolas onto a prop.
|
| Cool-retro-term is open source, and jwz wrote some modules
| (like apple2) for xscreensaver that also have a detailed CRT
| simulation. So maybe mine that code for techniques to include
| in a blender module?
| gjvc wrote:
| Used this for a lark, and it gave me a headache. 10/10 for
| implementation.
| abotsis wrote:
| I've been tempted recently to drop this on a pi and hook it up to
| an old oled I have sitting around (that has minor burnin) for
| status-monitory things. One cool side effect is that because it's
| always shifting pixels, it won't cause further burnin. No, the
| irony is not lost on me and I love it.
| gitgitchinchin wrote:
| this is great! thanks for the share
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Anyway to get this working on Windows?
| enriquto wrote:
| The compilation instructions for ubuntu do not currently work.
| Apparently, you need to add qtquickcontrols2-5-dev to the list of
| dependencies. But then at runtime you get this error:
| QQmlApplicationEngine failed to load component
| qrc:/main.qml:67 Type OSXMenu unavailable
| qrc:/menus/OSXMenu.qml:22 module "Qt.labs.platform" is not
| installed Cannot load QML interface
| pkaye wrote:
| Nothing like spending tons of computer power to duplicate the
| experience of technology limitations we had to bare with in the
| past!
| superjan wrote:
| I sat in front of those things for the first 10 years of my
| programming life. I am not nostalgic for them.
|
| If you guys are so into retrocomputing, I might have a teletype
| for you in the attic. Don't forget to bring your noise cancelling
| headphones.
| depingus wrote:
| Just FYI: it has context menus. So, if you have tmux to autostart
| when you open your fish shell, you will get a special tmux
| context menu on right-click instead of the Cool-Retro-Term menu
| that lets you edit your settings.
| caymanjim wrote:
| I know this is just a toy, but the curvature and saturation are
| massively exaggerated from what using these terminals was really
| like. This is really hard to look at for more than a couple
| seconds. In reality, the old VTxx terminals were much easier on
| the eyes, particularly the amber ones.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Do you mind sharing realistic settings with us?
| mmastrac wrote:
| Looks like you can adjust that:
|
| https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term/blob/master/a...
| Maursault wrote:
| > I know this is just a toy
|
| No more or less than any other terminal emulator.
| Falkon1313 wrote:
| Yes, the Windows terminal effects overdo that too. Sure there
| was a _little_ blur, but nowhere near as smeary as they make it
| look (unless you had buttered your monitor or something).
|
| Monitors back then were much lower resolution, so the blur was
| subpixel. And monochrome monitors or black and white TVs (one
| part per pixel) were much sharper and clearer than standard
| color monitors or color TVs (three parts per pixel). There
| should be almost no noticeable blur if emulating those.
|
| Increasing font size to 16 and decreasing font weight to
| 'light' helps a bit to get it more realistic, as long as you
| keep the terminal window at about 80x25.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _the curvature and saturation are massively exaggerated from
| what using these terminals was really like_
|
| Depends on how much your company wanted to spend on terminals.
|
| I worked for a chemical company where we had hand-me-down Wangs
| from a different division that looked very much like these.
|
| _This is really hard to look at for more than a couple
| seconds._
|
| Perhaps speak to your optometrist. When I was back in the
| office, I used this all day long on a 27-inch monitor with no
| problem. And I'm a graybeard.
|
| _the old VTxx terminals were much easier on the eyes,
| particularly the amber ones_
|
| I remember the amber terminals being marketed as easier on the
| eyes than the white or green ones I used, but I have no first-
| hand experience with amber.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I used amber monitors briefly and they were neat because they
| were different but I don't recall ever seeing a study
| justifying the "easier on the eyes" claim.
| ilaksh wrote:
| If you right click then you can go to Settings and reduce the
| curvature and tweak all of the effects levels. I hated it
| originally also but after turning a few things down and a few
| other things up (advanced tab "quality") it is much better.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I never used DEC VT terminals, but the curvature here does not
| seem exaggerated to me for other monitors circa 1980's.
| tyingq wrote:
| Here's a picture of an old kaypro, looks similar to me. Of
| course, it's a small screen, and the end user has the
| saturation up too high.
|
| https://www.nightfallcrew.com/wp-content/gallery/non-linear-...
| seertaak wrote:
| The keyboards on those machines... I loved my dad's kaypro :)
| caymanjim wrote:
| Screen is curved, text isn't.
| marcodiego wrote:
| I think you're wrong. Didn't look at the code but it seems
| curved to me. Even reflection on the border is simulated.
| caslon wrote:
| He probably meant: "On a real display, the screen is
| curved, but the text isn't."
| marcodiego wrote:
| This is very hard for me to confirm: I don't have any crt
| close by and the crt's which I used more (late 90's) were
| already mostly plane.
|
| But I remember big crt tv's. Some of the biggest one's,
| had a form of "inverse" curvature to mimic plane panels
| of the time. I clearly remember one whose curvature was
| not constant over the screen and panning scenes had a
| weird effect of enhancing its deformities. So, I still
| think he is wrong even on this second case.
| classichasclass wrote:
| There is some curvature on real terminals; here's my
| AM-75, which is a rebadged Wyse.
|
| https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2020/06/refurb-weekend-alpha-
| mic...
|
| However, it's probably not as extreme as what this does,
| and when you're sitting in front of it (the photo is at
| an angle) I don't notice much text distortion.
| tyingq wrote:
| It is much more noticeable on smaller CRT screens, like
| the 9 inch one on the Kaypro.
| [deleted]
| datavirtue wrote:
| Agreed. I would really dig this if it was a bit more realistic.
| I really miss amber monochrome and have had it at the back of
| my mind to build some css themes to mimick the old monochrome
| screens for years.
| masklinn wrote:
| There was a similar program called Cathode for macos.
|
| The effects were cool (including the ability to change the
| bitrate of the terminal, made me understand why ed would make
| sense even aside from the other resource constraints, even `cat`
| takes ages at low speeds). There were also a bunch of included
| sounds like hardware boots (relay clicks, fan ramp up, etc...)
|
| But the neatest thing is is that IIRC its "DRM scheme" was that
| the display would slowly degrade if you didn't have a paid
| license. You could also degauss it (though I don't think it would
| fix the degradation, you had to reboot for that). Obviously if
| you liked the degradation effect you could keep it even with a
| paid license.
| NextHendrix wrote:
| I wish there was a setting to fold parenthesis in comments
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Oh! I forgot all about Cathode but I used to love it,
| especially during the peak skeuomorphic Mac OS X era (tho I
| think it was then called OS X but I can't remember what year
| Cathode was released, just that it worked on Lion). I forgot
| about the DRM thing too, but I was aware of it, and again, such
| a peak skeuomorphic vibe.
|
| I've had cool-retro-term in my GitHub stars for years but I
| think I only used it on Linux. I'll defUnitedHealth need to
| spin-up the latest release on macOS to reminisce about the
| glory days of software emulating software some of us don't
| really remember (so I'm now legitimately nostalgic for the
| nostalgia-ware of a time I don't actually remember).
| alar44 wrote:
| For the Windows users, you can run this with WSL and Cygwin.
|
| (Maybe you can do this in WSL natively now, not sure, it's been a
| couple years)
| guytv wrote:
| wow. brings back memories
| timoteostewart wrote:
| For Windows folks, Windows Terminal has a similar effect
| available. Definitely nostalgic, definitely fun for a minute,
| definitely not how I would want to work in the terminal.
|
| Steps to try the feature out:
|
| Open/Switch to Windows Terminal
|
| Control-, [Control-<comma>] to open Settings
|
| Pick any profile from the side bar
|
| Click Appearance tab
|
| Toggle "Retro terminal effects" located below the font options
| saalaa wrote:
| It depends. I could see myself using this for niche
| applications such as visually marking certain terminals.
|
| When you work on multiple remote hosts, it's common practice to
| use different profiles to visually identify hosts. Say your
| local machine has your standard and preferred colorscheme but
| staging machines have a green background and customer-facing
| machines have a red background. Indeed, it's a manual process
| but I've seen people use it in most places where a substantial
| amount of work is done on remote hosts (I still use it today
| if/when I need to access remote hosts).
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| I deleted an archive tape, by being logged in to the wrong
| machine. The terminals did have different prompts, but that
| wasn't enough.
| saalaa wrote:
| It's happen to all of us frankly. Now I also keep the
| default shell on remote machines. I guess it's a cognitive
| trick where I feel uneasy at the different prompt and key
| bindings (I use zsh with bindkey -v locally).
| speedgoose wrote:
| I just downloaded cool-retro-term now that I have a mac, and
| the Windows Terminal effects are nowhere as cool.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Xscreensaver has been shipping a wonderful crt emulator that
| works as a terminal for at least ten years. It's based on the
| older "cathode" program.
| calrain wrote:
| I have an old Osbourne Executive, that amber screen is amazingly
| accurate
| ryukafalz wrote:
| I use this whenever I feel like playing text adventures in frotz.
| Great ambience for that :)
| chrischen wrote:
| This will be a great conversation starter for screen-lookers
| while I'm at a cafe.
| hexomancer wrote:
| Totally worth the headache. Is it possible to use this with
| guake?
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(page generated 2022-03-20 23:00 UTC)