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> Oddly enough, Unix is older than that, and got it right. Perhaps it has something to do with Unix tty. Unix systems are mainframes or servers, the tty subsys
by segfaultbuserr 8y ago
> Oddly enough, Unix is older than that, and got it right.
Perhaps it has something to do with Unix tty. Unix systems are mainframes or servers, the tty subsystem only cares about transmitting the text and control sequences, the actual rendering is done by a CRT terminal at a remote location. Meanwhile, the DOS family was designed for microcomputers and PCs, the text output is tightly-coupled with the system and hardware, including how to draw them. The Windows XP console can even switch to the genuine VGA textmode as used by DOS by pressing Control+Enter.
I guess the Unix tty allowed flexibility. It doesn't matter if someone reimplemented it using VGA textmode, or 2D accelerated framebuffer (modern Linux kernel), fancy 3D OpenGL stack (kmscon, but sadly the project is dead), or a cairo-based graphical interface. Meanwhile, Microsoft haven't continue to develop and modernize the console subsystem in a long time (clarify: at least in 8 years of Windows XP era, until recently).
- zadjii 8y ago> Meanwhile, Microsoft haven't continue to develop and modernize the console subsystem in a long time. That's just provably false. We've been hard at work on the console for the last 4 years, culminating in today's Terminal announcement. See https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/ for a few examples of things we've been doing for the last few years. One in particular: Last year we added support for a pty-like interface in Windows with [ConPty](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-command-line-introducing-the-windows-pseudo-console-conpty/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-command-l...)
- mixmastamyk 8y agoWhen you stop work for ~20 years, then get crackin' for a few it understandably takes a while for the news to get out. May not be obvious if you're 25.
- naikrovek 8y agoIt's not a secret. People need to do a minimum amount of homework before they spout off online.
- mixmastamyk 8y agoIt's still mostly true. In the last few years they've modernized it towards an 80's terminal, but it still falls short in areas.
- naikrovek 8y agoIt's on-par with the terminals available on Linux... Midnight Commander, htop, applications that make extensive use of VT command sequences all work fine.
- mixmastamyk 8y agoNo, the legacy console is still quite crippled, unicode and tabs just two examples. This new terminal and conpty are promising but have yet to be introduced unless you compile it yourself.