Imagining the CLI For the Modern Machine 317
scc writes "TermKit is a re-think of the storied Unix terminal, where human views, input and data pipes are separated. Output viewers render any kind of data usefully. It may not be a new idea, but it's certainly a new take on it." I know you are quite comfortable in your shell of old, but this sort of thing sure gets my juices going. The best of both worlds.
Re:This is better how? (Score:5, Funny)
But they can cat an image and see a picture of a cat with a caption! That is totally more usable! ;)
I can has xterm?
Oh, the Hypocrisy (Score:4, Funny)
This has lead to "somewhat parseable text" being the default interchange format of choice. This seems like an okay choice, until you start to factor in the biggest lesson learned on the web: there is no such thing as plain text. Text is messy. Text-based formats lie at the basis of every SQL injection, XSS exploit and encoding error. And it's in text-parsing code where you'll likely find buffer overflows.
?
Thus says the guy who's implementing a HTML5 + CSS + JS client / server terminal wrapper. Hey, FYI, your whole TermKit stack is made of parsed text. Indeed, the only way to access your API is via parsed text. As if Webkit (that TermKit is build on) never has any "buffer overflows". Pffffft. Added complexity, more surface for bugs to appear, 'nuff said.
Also -- No thanks. I already have a window manager. I agree that occasionally mouse input is the right choice, and an environment that embraces both text terminal and GUI elements is neat, but I just couldn't stand to read any more of the Hypocritical remarks...
He talks about displaying objects and passing them around as JSON objects -- Yeah, JSON is a textual representation of an object that must be parsed to be displayed.
P.S. Only available on Mac? What the duce? It's just a HTML / CSS + JS interface -- If the guy had any brains you could just point any browser at it and he'd have saved the time of writing a complete client... unless... the goal is to take some elitist (noob) stance regarding UI.
More "Text is Sloppy" hypocrisy:
TermKit's input revolves around tokenfield.js, a new snappy widget with plenty of tricks. It can do auto-quoting, inline autocomplete, icon badges, and more. It avoids the escaping issue altogether, by always processing the command as tokens rather than text. Keys that trigger special behaviors (like a quote) can be pressed again to undo the behavior and just type one character.
The behaviors are encoded in a series of objects and regexp-based triggers, which transform and split tokens as they are typed.
Uhhhggg.