4 ms·

I think you should forget the whole "terminal based" thing. TUI text editors don't make much sense anymore. Native GUIs are much less clunky and much more disco

by pinum 9y ago

I think you should forget the whole "terminal based" thing. TUI text editors don't make much sense anymore. Native GUIs are much less clunky and much more discoverable.

cholantesh 9y ago
I wish people would learn to appreciate that UX is subjective. I find most GUI-based editors to be RSI inducing. The level of effort required to change that is not worth it for me. Others may disagree. And that's fine.
- udp 9y ago
  Just because it's a GUI doesn't mean you have to use the mouse. I find gvim much faster than vim in the terminal because it doesn't have to print a screen full of glyphs for each update.
  - farresito 9y ago
    On the other hand, vim + tmux is pretty awesome, and for that reason I prefer vim on the terminal. I've never particularly liked gvim, even if I'm not using tmux. In Linux, hitting the start or end of a buffer causes some sort of screen redraw that I've never been able to fix, but that might have to do with my configuration.
city41 9y ago
TUI still has advantages. Editing files over SSH is simpler, the app is easier to build cross platform, and for me personally the lack of a context switch when I'm in my terminal is nice. Even tiny little differences that keep you in your flow add up.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
davidw 9y ago
I use Emacs in both modes.
adamrt 9y ago
I have my development machine at Digital Ocean. My local machine is an under powered macbook air (underpowered now that I use lots of docker for development). I'll probably just get a tiny chromebook next as I just want a dumb terminal. I run emacs over ssh/tmux. I love it, emacs never shuts down, all my shells run through emacs as well. I can use any machine with my sshkey and be back to work immediately. I can increase the size of the machine, have public access to my dev box if needed. If I have a bad internet connection it doesnt matter since its just sending low bandwidth over ssh. All the real bandwidth comes from DigitalOcean and is super fast.
- mov 9y ago
  I do pretty much the same but using mosh instead of ssh. It's really stable even on low bandwidth of crappy mobile connection.
btschaegg 9y ago
Well let's not generalize on the clunky part; there's always Visual Studio ;-) I would generally agree with your point, especially on the discoverability front - this is why emacs and vim have an often dreaded learning curve. But OTOH, there are also a couple of rather nice benefits to the terminal focus that I don't currently see in more GUI focused editors. It would certainly be doable to replicate them, but it seems like no one's trying currently. So I would hold off on forgetting about the terminal until there's a viable alternative around. Oh, and: I've seen my fair share of botched remote access solutions on the Windows side of things and would probably use any TUI editor short of ed over any IDE in those situations. At least SSH is responsive.
flukus 9y ago
Check out kakoune, TUI based and very discoverable.

by pinum 9y ago

I think you should forget the whole "terminal based" thing. TUI text editors don't make much sense anymore. Native GUIs are much less clunky and much more discoverable.

cholantesh 9y ago

I wish people would learn to appreciate that UX is subjective. I find most GUI-based editors to be RSI inducing. The level of effort required to change that is not worth it for me. Others may disagree. And that's fine.

udp 9y ago
Just because it's a GUI doesn't mean you have to use the mouse. I find gvim much faster than vim in the terminal because it doesn't have to print a screen full of glyphs for each update.
- farresito 9y ago
  On the other hand, vim + tmux is pretty awesome, and for that reason I prefer vim on the terminal. I've never particularly liked gvim, even if I'm not using tmux. In Linux, hitting the start or end of a buffer causes some sort of screen redraw that I've never been able to fix, but that might have to do with my configuration.

city41 9y ago

TUI still has advantages. Editing files over SSH is simpler, the app is easier to build cross platform, and for me personally the lack of a context switch when I'm in my terminal is nice. Even tiny little differences that keep you in your flow add up.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

davidw 9y ago

I use Emacs in both modes.

adamrt 9y ago

I have my development machine at Digital Ocean. My local machine is an under powered macbook air (underpowered now that I use lots of docker for development). I'll probably just get a tiny chromebook next as I just want a dumb terminal. I run emacs over ssh/tmux. I love it, emacs never shuts down, all my shells run through emacs as well. I can use any machine with my sshkey and be back to work immediately. I can increase the size of the machine, have public access to my dev box if needed. If I have a bad internet connection it doesnt matter since its just sending low bandwidth over ssh. All the real bandwidth comes from DigitalOcean and is super fast.

mov 9y ago
I do pretty much the same but using mosh instead of ssh. It's really stable even on low bandwidth of crappy mobile connection.

btschaegg 9y ago

Well let's not generalize on the clunky part; there's always Visual Studio ;-) I would generally agree with your point, especially on the discoverability front - this is why emacs and vim have an often dreaded learning curve. But OTOH, there are also a couple of rather nice benefits to the terminal focus that I don't currently see in more GUI focused editors. It would certainly be doable to replicate them, but it seems like no one's trying currently. So I would hold off on forgetting about the terminal until there's a viable alternative around. Oh, and: I've seen my fair share of botched remote access solutions on the Windows side of things and would probably use any TUI editor short of ed over any IDE in those situations. At least SSH is responsive.

flukus 9y ago

Check out kakoune, TUI based and very discoverable.