5 ms·

Did anyone here use Genera on an original lisp machine? It had a pseudo-graphical interface and a directory listing provided clickable results. It would be real

Did anyone here use Genera on an original lisp machine? It had a pseudo-graphical interface and a directory listing provided clickable results. It would be really neat if we could use escaping to confer more information to the terminal about what a particular piece of text means. Feature-request: bring back clickable ls results! Bonus points for defining a new term type and standard for this.

dotancohen 2y ago
> Feature-request: bring back clickable ls results! Doesn't your desktop (or distro) have a graphical file manager? On KDE it's Dolphin, which ex-Windows users absolutely love. I don't know what it would be on Gnome or other desktops.
- shakna 2y ago
  My ssh client also supports mouse events, though.
- mabster 2y ago
  I'm not going to speak for Linux, but on Mac the Finder is annoying enough that I ended up using CLI for file manipulation (ranger).
yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
It's not really that, but have you tried ranger?
rphln 2y ago
There's already `ls --hyperlink` for clickable results, but that depends on your terminal supporting the URL escape sequence.
- westurner 2y ago
  $ man ls | grep '\--hyperlink' -A 1 --hyperlink[=WHEN] hyperlink file names WHEN
- db48x 2y ago
  This is nice, but a poor substitute for what Genera was doing. You see, Genera knows the actual type of everything that is clickable. When a program needs an input, objects of the wrong type _lose their interactivity_ for the duration. So if you list the files in some directory, the names of those files are indeed links that you can click on. Clicking on one would bring up a context menu of relevant actions (view, edit, print, delete, etc). If a program asks for a filename as input then clicking on a file instead supplies the file object to the program. Clicking on objects of other types does nothing.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    Tab completion has developed some similar features. I've seen shells that will only autocomplete what seem to be appropriate choices.
    - ptspts 2y ago
      I typically turn this off. Many times it's too slow, and many times it hides local filenames, and I do want local filenames.
  - Rendello 2y ago
    That's one aspect I prefer in playing with TempleOS over Linux. The rest of the command line is a bit of a pain, with no history, C-as-a-shell, etc.
  - petesergeant 2y ago
    > Genera knows the actual type of everything I have this side-project fantasy of a very simple terminal pipe-types project. The basic idea is a set of very basic standardized types, demarcated using escape sequences. Dates, filenames, URLs, numbers, possibly one or two number units as well (time periods, file sizes only). Tools that already produce columnar data (ls) get a flag that lets them output this format, and tools that work with piped data (cut, sort, uniq) get equivalents or modes that let them easily work with this. Essentially, simple typed tables held in text, with enhancements for existing tooling to know how to deal with it. Would make my day-to-day on the command line much easier.
mbivert 2y ago
Maybe some aspects of the Plan9 UI? (rio/9term, plumber; acme as well). You should be able to get this to work on Unix with plan9port.

dotancohen 2y ago

> Feature-request: bring back clickable ls results! Doesn't your desktop (or distro) have a graphical file manager? On KDE it's Dolphin, which ex-Windows users absolutely love. I don't know what it would be on Gnome or other desktops.

shakna 2y ago
My ssh client also supports mouse events, though.
mabster 2y ago
I'm not going to speak for Linux, but on Mac the Finder is annoying enough that I ended up using CLI for file manipulation (ranger).

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago

It's not really that, but have you tried ranger?

rphln 2y ago

There's already `ls --hyperlink` for clickable results, but that depends on your terminal supporting the URL escape sequence.

westurner 2y ago
$ man ls | grep '\--hyperlink' -A 1 --hyperlink[=WHEN] hyperlink file names WHEN
db48x 2y ago
This is nice, but a poor substitute for what Genera was doing. You see, Genera knows the actual type of everything that is clickable. When a program needs an input, objects of the wrong type _lose their interactivity_ for the duration. So if you list the files in some directory, the names of those files are indeed links that you can click on. Clicking on one would bring up a context menu of relevant actions (view, edit, print, delete, etc). If a program asks for a filename as input then clicking on a file instead supplies the file object to the program. Clicking on objects of other types does nothing.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  Tab completion has developed some similar features. I've seen shells that will only autocomplete what seem to be appropriate choices.
  - ptspts 2y ago
    I typically turn this off. Many times it's too slow, and many times it hides local filenames, and I do want local filenames.
- Rendello 2y ago
  That's one aspect I prefer in playing with TempleOS over Linux. The rest of the command line is a bit of a pain, with no history, C-as-a-shell, etc.
- petesergeant 2y ago
  > Genera knows the actual type of everything I have this side-project fantasy of a very simple terminal pipe-types project. The basic idea is a set of very basic standardized types, demarcated using escape sequences. Dates, filenames, URLs, numbers, possibly one or two number units as well (time periods, file sizes only). Tools that already produce columnar data (ls) get a flag that lets them output this format, and tools that work with piped data (cut, sort, uniq) get equivalents or modes that let them easily work with this. Essentially, simple typed tables held in text, with enhancements for existing tooling to know how to deal with it. Would make my day-to-day on the command line much easier.

mbivert 2y ago

Maybe some aspects of the Plan9 UI? (rio/9term, plumber; acme as well). You should be able to get this to work on Unix with plan9port.