[HN Gopher] Candlelit Console patch set to the OpenBSD framebuff...
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       Candlelit Console patch set to the OpenBSD framebuffer console
        
       Author : bsdly-pitrh
       Score  : 40 points
       Date   : 2022-05-16 09:45 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (undeadly.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (undeadly.org)
        
       | tedunangst wrote:
       | I believe compilers deliberately avoid the partial width
       | instructions because they are slower in practice.
        
       | petee wrote:
       | The original article goes into depth on the implementation --
       | https://www.exoticsilicon.com/research/candlelit_console
        
         | akdor1154 wrote:
         | This page is CSS's reason-to-be.
        
       | hestefisk wrote:
       | I have this dream of being able to live my entire computer life
       | in a Unix command line without need for X or GUIs. Just boot
       | straight to command line and go. Does anyone here do that?
        
         | nsajko wrote:
         | You may be interested in the work of Ali Gholami Rudi. Scroll
         | down to the "framebuffer" section: https://litcave.rudi.ir
         | 
         | Apart from things like writing his own C compiler and
         | typesetting systems, Rudi implemented several GUI programs that
         | work on Linux without Xorg or Wayland. He claims there on his
         | site he doesn't even use Xorg any more.
        
         | rollcat wrote:
         | I'm a big fan of this as a principle, but I feel that the
         | terminals / command lines haven't really evolved much beyond a
         | VT102; the biggest widespread innovation probably being the
         | ability to resize a window.
         | 
         | Let's agree that by "command line", I mean an actual command
         | line: one program piping data into another. If you're using the
         | terminal to run character grid programs, like lynx, vi, mc,
         | top, mutt, etc, it's strictly inferior to running an equivalent
         | X11 program of similarly minimalist UI design: the X11 protocol
         | is already serialised, but with a terminal, you can barely get
         | as far as rendering a basic picture (sixels exist, but barely
         | anything supports them). The Macintosh did more in 1984, and
         | the terminals never caught up.
         | 
         | The terminal emulator in Emacs is actually an interesting take:
         | it pretends to be dumber than it is, but in return you can e.g.
         | move your cursor freely around the terminal output; copy and
         | paste; select, edit & rerun a command. Swift Playgrounds allow
         | you to rerun a script, but starting from the line you've last
         | edited; you also get a preview of what each variable is holding
         | - it feels like a fusion of the "command-response" style, and
         | writing code in an editor. These things are really cool, this
         | is the kind of innovation that the command line could use.
         | 
         | For most day to day work though, you're likely fooling yourself
         | by running mutt and vi - or you can prove me wrong and use
         | MH[1] and ed, but let's agree it gets counterproductive real
         | fast.
         | 
         | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System
        
         | MobiusHorizons wrote:
         | I have a similar goal. When I first installed openBSD, I used
         | it that way for a while using tmux. The main issue I ran into
         | is that the console doesn't support a number of the things I
         | have gotten used to in gui terminals (Unicode, full color
         | support, mouse scrolling) it was actually really close though,
         | especially because on openBSD you end up using man pages
         | instead of internet searches for a lot of tasks. I think what
         | ultimately gets me every time I try this is the web browser.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | SoftTalker wrote:
         | I have done it up to maybe 75% from time to time.
         | 
         | Most of what I do is in ssh sessions to other systems in Xterm
         | windows, so that's easy to do in console especially with tmux.
         | 
         | I read my email in a terminal as well.
         | 
         | I still need a web browser mostly for administrative stuff at
         | my office that is only provided with a web interface.
        
         | depingus wrote:
         | Might be closer than you think... Check out Notcurses.
         | 
         | https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses
         | 
         | Here's a demo:
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcjkezf1ARY
        
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       (page generated 2022-05-16 23:02 UTC)