> To accomplish this in a similar way in the GUI, I think you need to design a toolkit that intentionally constrains the rendering target and input mechanisms t

> To accomplish this in a similar way in the GUI, I think you need to design a toolkit that intentionally constrains the rendering target and input mechanisms that the GUIs can take advantage of. I like to think that software developers are very smart people, and only need a little nudge to steer in the right direction. If all you have is PutRune(x,y,r) and intentionally omit PutPixel(x,y,p), you'll indeed just make a worse terminal emulator. Any decent UI toolkit focuses on a high-level description of the user interface (that's how you get a11y, basic keyboard navigation, etc almost for free), and only provides the low-level operations as escape hatches. This has to be the default route, even for complex or highly customized interfaces (spreadsheet, DAW, etc). I think our nudge could be direct support for terminals as a fallback rendering backend. Best of both worlds: you get a well-behaved GUI app, that you can also use over a serial console (with gradual loss of functionality) if things get dire.