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> style TUIs were kind of awful. You might have disliked them but they were far from awful. They were some of the cleanest TUIs ever designed. The other scree

> style TUIs were kind of awful. You might have disliked them but they were far from awful. They were some of the cleanest TUIs ever designed. The other screenshot you shared isn’t a TUI by the way. It’s a GUI. It just happens it runs atop of DOS (much like early versions of Windows did). So it’s not really comparable to TurboVision. Regarding TurboVision, I suspect you might be in the minority with your dislike for them too. Which I guess just goes to prove that everyone will have different preferences and thus you can’t please everyone all of the time.

LocalH 5y ago
Pretty sure ScreamTracker ran in text mode, so it's a TUI. It just used a custom font, instead of most TUIs using the stock BIOS or video card font.
- laumars 5y ago
  It has bevels made up of 3 colours, so I can’t see how it’s pure text mode. It’s certainly text heavy so they could have drawn the GUI int a frame buffer and then just used text mode for screen updates. But that’s a little disingenuous from being a TUI.
  - pengaru 5y ago
    Impulse Tracker uses VGA 80x50 text mode. https://github.com/herrnst/impulsetracker/blob/master/IT_S.ASM#L519 https://github.com/herrnst/impulsetracker/blob/master/IT_S.A... http://www.ctyme.com/intr/rb-0069.htm http://www.ctyme.com/intr/rb-0069.htm
    - laumars 5y ago
      You guys are still missing my point that it’s not a TUI because non-text elements have been drawn to the frame buffer. This is actually a lot easier to do in DOS than it is in UNIX too by virtue of the fact that DOSs text mode isn’t a pseudo-teletype. In fact this is a trick I used to do all the time when writing software back in the 80s: draw a UI then fallback to printing characters for UI updates. For that tracker to be a proper TUI it would have to use text characters for all of the UI elements, bevels included. You simply couldn’t do those 3-tone bevels with any alt character sets, let alone an 8-bit one from the era of DOS.
      - fzzzy 5y ago
        Are you sure? It seems to me that they were probably replacing some text characters with their own sprites instead. They could still be text characters, just redefined for their purposes.
      - LocalH 5y ago
        What frame buffer? There is no frame buffer. It runs in text mode, thus it's a TUI. Would you consider Norton's text-mode interfaces not TUIs because they would redefine some characters for window chrome and a mouse pointer?

LocalH 5y ago

Pretty sure ScreamTracker ran in text mode, so it's a TUI. It just used a custom font, instead of most TUIs using the stock BIOS or video card font.

laumars 5y ago
It has bevels made up of 3 colours, so I can’t see how it’s pure text mode. It’s certainly text heavy so they could have drawn the GUI int a frame buffer and then just used text mode for screen updates. But that’s a little disingenuous from being a TUI.
- pengaru 5y ago
  Impulse Tracker uses VGA 80x50 text mode. https://github.com/herrnst/impulsetracker/blob/master/IT_S.ASM#L519 https://github.com/herrnst/impulsetracker/blob/master/IT_S.A... http://www.ctyme.com/intr/rb-0069.htm http://www.ctyme.com/intr/rb-0069.htm
  - laumars 5y ago
    You guys are still missing my point that it’s not a TUI because non-text elements have been drawn to the frame buffer. This is actually a lot easier to do in DOS than it is in UNIX too by virtue of the fact that DOSs text mode isn’t a pseudo-teletype. In fact this is a trick I used to do all the time when writing software back in the 80s: draw a UI then fallback to printing characters for UI updates. For that tracker to be a proper TUI it would have to use text characters for all of the UI elements, bevels included. You simply couldn’t do those 3-tone bevels with any alt character sets, let alone an 8-bit one from the era of DOS.
    - fzzzy 5y ago
      Are you sure? It seems to me that they were probably replacing some text characters with their own sprites instead. They could still be text characters, just redefined for their purposes.
    - LocalH 5y ago
      What frame buffer? There is no frame buffer. It runs in text mode, thus it's a TUI. Would you consider Norton's text-mode interfaces not TUIs because they would redefine some characters for window chrome and a mouse pointer?