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Icons in GUIs are commonly used for interactive elements. Most CLI tools are not interactive, they just produce some output and the user expects that output to
by alpaca128 6y ago
Icons in GUIs are commonly used for interactive elements. Most
CLI tools are not interactive, they just produce some output and
the user expects that output to be easy to parse and compatible
with as many terminals as possible.
You can easily output tables, bullet lists and many other things
just with basic symbols supported everywhere. If your CLI
program requires installing fontawesome or breaks in a terminal
multiplexer etc. I'm probably not going to use it.
- brabel 6y agoEmojis are part of unicode. No need for font awesome to support emojis. Visit https://emojipedia.org https://emojipedia.org and notice how all emojis have their own code point :)
- account42 6y agoBeing part of Unicode does not preclude having to install additional fonts.
- alpaca128 6y agoI merely mentioned fontawesome as one of many possible examples. And as already said, a symbol having its place in unicode does not mean it is available on the computer or in a certain program. For example, in Linux terminals it's not uncommon that at least one optional font installation is required in order to get various emoji to display correctly, let alone other non-western symbols. Many people use the terminal exactly because it displays fewer kinds of content than e.g. a web browser, which as a side effect simplifies many situations.