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I find it interesting that people still build and like TUIs that have menus and buttons. Trying to stuff a 1980s windowing paradigm into a terminal just seems o
by drob518 5mo ago
I find it interesting that people still build and like TUIs that have menus and buttons. Trying to stuff a 1980s windowing paradigm into a terminal just seems odd to me. I never really liked the Borland interface. The article says that menus provide discoverability without having to read a manual, which is true, but at a cost of a whole line of precious text in the term and multiple keystrokes with modifiers to open the menu. Seems like a help key with a pop-up overlay could give you just as much discoverability. Anyway these Borland-style TUIs just keep hanging around. IMO, better to embrace something more like Emacs with built-in help.
- JNRowe 5mo agoThere are plenty of examples where menu display and help texts can be toggled. For example, aptitude has `Aptitude::UI::Menubar-Autohide` and midnight commander has options in the layout menu to disable menu/buttons/etc. That way beginners get to learn through discovery, and may later choose to switch to calling the menu/action with a keypress. Both of those respond to "standard" F1 for help too. Would I prefer emacs M-x and C-h style interaction in mc? Yeah, probably. I'm used to it everywhere else(such as zsh). However, as a long term user I can execute basically all the functions even though I've long since disabled the buttons, menus and hints.
- drob518 5mo agoYea, I get it. You can always disable things. For whatever reason, F1 has always felt very Microsoftish to me (and yes, I know it’s back to IBM CUA). All that stuff came from that PC era when everyone was still mostly using DOS and had serious Macintosh envy. So, sure, stuff Windows into a term screen. Note that it doesn’t have to be something with key modifiers like M-x or C-h. “?” would do it.