4 ms·

I don't understand why such legacy support is necessary for 99% of my terminal use cases. I just want to run command-line programs in something that doesn't emu

I don't understand why such legacy support is necessary for 99% of my terminal use cases. I just want to run command-line programs in something that doesn't emulate weird hardware from last century, but uses OS standard text input and display. I will never be convinced that setting colors and cursor positions with keycodes is a good design.

SiempreViernes 3y ago
I know it sounds unbelievable, but the default apps bundled with stock operating systems have not, in fact, been selected to exactly match your personal use cases. There's actually this rather common expectation that the end user is the one that is in charge of personalising their system to their exact needs.
- H4ZB7 3y ago
  [flagged]
rigid 3y ago
> I don't understand why such legacy support is necessary for 99% of my terminal use cases. People need to run apps via uart or any other kind of remote link that might come in the future.
- dmytrish 3y ago
  Yes, but even UART could handle some kind of a simple multiplexer protocol with multiple data streams.
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    It's the OS's job to expose a stream interface on top of a UART. There was a graphical terminal called the Blit (sold as the AT&T 5620, succeeded by the DMD 630 and then the 730 "Multi-Tasking Graphical Terminals"). They implemented windowing, multiple streams, graphics and a lot more on top of serial connections. Essentially, multiplexing streams on top of "a UART". What you describe is more or less what they did back then, minus the windowing and multi-tasking functions, because we let the host OS deal with that. There is even a neat 5620 emulator for macOS you can download from the app store. It requires a proprietary shell running for that tty, and I never took the time to figure out exactly how it works. https://archives.loomcom.com/3b2/documents/DMD_Terminal/ https://archives.loomcom.com/3b2/documents/DMD_Terminal/ has some good docs on that, and bitsavers.org has a ton more on the 630 and 730. I hope one day someone finds a ton of them forgotten in a warehouse in the middle of a desert in the US, because, where I live people recycle old computers with an uncanny dedication (those barbarians!).
  - rigid 3y ago
    which would be in-band signalling again since uart is just timed 0's and 1's over a single tx and rx signal.

SiempreViernes 3y ago

I know it sounds unbelievable, but the default apps bundled with stock operating systems have not, in fact, been selected to exactly match your personal use cases. There's actually this rather common expectation that the end user is the one that is in charge of personalising their system to their exact needs.

H4ZB7 3y ago
[flagged]

rigid 3y ago

> I don't understand why such legacy support is necessary for 99% of my terminal use cases. People need to run apps via uart or any other kind of remote link that might come in the future.

dmytrish 3y ago
Yes, but even UART could handle some kind of a simple multiplexer protocol with multiple data streams.
- rbanffy 3y ago
  It's the OS's job to expose a stream interface on top of a UART. There was a graphical terminal called the Blit (sold as the AT&T 5620, succeeded by the DMD 630 and then the 730 "Multi-Tasking Graphical Terminals"). They implemented windowing, multiple streams, graphics and a lot more on top of serial connections. Essentially, multiplexing streams on top of "a UART". What you describe is more or less what they did back then, minus the windowing and multi-tasking functions, because we let the host OS deal with that. There is even a neat 5620 emulator for macOS you can download from the app store. It requires a proprietary shell running for that tty, and I never took the time to figure out exactly how it works. https://archives.loomcom.com/3b2/documents/DMD_Terminal/ https://archives.loomcom.com/3b2/documents/DMD_Terminal/ has some good docs on that, and bitsavers.org has a ton more on the 630 and 730. I hope one day someone finds a ton of them forgotten in a warehouse in the middle of a desert in the US, because, where I live people recycle old computers with an uncanny dedication (those barbarians!).
- rigid 3y ago
  which would be in-band signalling again since uart is just timed 0's and 1's over a single tx and rx signal.