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There is a significant difference between async-shell-command and terminal emulators in that the latter allow programs to manipulate emulator state via escape c

There is a significant difference between async-shell-command and terminal emulators in that the latter allow programs to manipulate emulator state via escape codes, positioning the cursor, clearing screen, resizing the draw area etc. I think terminal emulators are inferior to the Emacs experience. They often exhibit issues when you try to select and copy multiline text in e.g. irssi or vim, where you suddenly need the underlying program to be X-aware for that to work properly. If something uses ncurses, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be broken in one way or another and it doesn’t have any of the programmatic benefits traditionally associated with command-line programs (piping). Terminal emulators simply emulate an outdated UI paradigm. Emacs UI although not perfect is in a completely different league.

marcus0x62 3y ago
> There is a significant difference between async-shell-command and terminal emulators in that the latter allow programs to manipulate emulator state ... Hence why I said async-shell-command isn't technically a terminal emulator. It does, however, provide the same functional capability to launch a program, direct user input to it, and receive output from the program -- what most people are using terminal emulators for. The big difference, in the authors described workflow, is they are launching these commands on an ad-hoc basis, not from a semi-permanent shell. That, I would argue, is the biggest practical difference between what most people are doing and what the author is describing.