alt Hacker News(2/2)
> it's there while I'm releasing the Enter key
> And before you start taking into account that a lot of gui software is just poorly written trash seemingly written by morons under the CADT model (Hi, gnome!).
We can definitely agree here!!! :)
> Better than reinventing a whole new kind of terminal applications which aren't actual terminal applications,
Why are they not actual terminal applications? What terminal functionality do they lack? Please provide excruciating technical detail on this subject about which you know nothing.
> but only work in an environment emulated by the very thing they want to replace.
For the umpteenth time, who said anything about replacing guis? I have repeatedly stated that they have their uses and are the best option for a bunch of things.
> The same morons will come and screw up with all kinds of things there again, once that'd get more momentum. But now, since they also have to maintain EFL plugins or other graphical-to-terminal translations for their apps and file formats, they will even screw up heavier.
EFL plugins? Graphical to terminal translations? What are you talking about? It's almost like you don't understand the technology and have invented some fantasy architecture for all this stuff which is nothing like the actual architecture that exists and has been described here and elsewhere.
> On an average day, I open a Dolphin window maybe once or twice... Often not even once (e.g. I just open my IDE and stay there, or the browser, or a game, you name it). You don't need a new one for every operation!
> if your workflow is seriously superior, then be happy that EFL and all that exists and supports all the file formats that you want to preview, and be happy that it provides all the features you need. I'm happy with you then. I have the feeling that it's a very special workflow for a very special task at best, though.
> And you type "xdg-open" while I can just press Enter (or double-click ^^)
> Why should I constantly want previews of something, so often that I'd care about a second of waiting time once in preparation,
> Couldn't you just leave it open then?! Yeah, you'll definitely have some reasons...
Have you ever left dolphin open for 160+ hours in a directory containing 80,000 mp3s? How'd that work out for you? How did it handle it? How much ram did it use? What was your system load like?
> Sure you do! I know! Terminology is one of them. That's exactly the point.
> For an actual (virtual)terminal, it would at least remotely make some sense to me. Because there it's not an option to just use a common X11/Wayland image viewer.
Let's say you do mean that: You still have no clue what you're talking about. For instance it's trivially easy to view an image or play a video with no graphical environment running*, as long as you have hardware that can do a framebuffer. Like, for example, every graphics card made in the last 30+ years. And if you have that hardware, then you can run terminology on it, too. As raster already mentioned and you failed to understand.
* (one of my machines is indeed set up to play video 24x7 and does not run a windowing system or graphical environment at all)
> It's trying to make terminal apps graphical, right?
If you think it might be, you might want to look into that. Ascribing motivations to inanimate objects seems like it might not be healthy.
> And all that technical complexity is just there
You don't know. Because you don't understand how it works, and you've ignored the people who tried to tell you.
> because you don't have to move your eyes to another window
Please try re-reading my other responses and this time try to comprehend what I'm saying if you'd like to continue this discussion.
> there are very basic image viewers without any features
So then, you're saying they don't open up a window? They don't decode jpeg?
I question the usefulness of this software. But I can't wait to see your list.
> I've no idea why they should be slower than the EFL previewers
> I'd definitely dislike to see all that arriving in major desktop environments. And I'm still optimistic in that regard
> If it does, at least there might be ways to integrate the Dolphin thumbnailers. :)
Are you saying that you wish lsix[6] existed? And that it worked in konsole? And that you wish you could use it right now with literally 3 seconds of effort to install it? Are you saying that, after typing a hundred thousand words railing against the inclusion of any graphical features in any terminal ever?
> In some way that's exactly what I'm wondering about when people have terminal-centric workflows in an environment that could actually just do graphics.
I love how, after having the massive complexity of gui applications explained to you, you just brush that off and say "just do graphics". That's pretty good trolling right there.
> In particular when they then start to patch graphics support inside their terminals
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel
[2] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=391781
[3] https://github.com/hpjansson/chafa/issues/78
[4] https://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.log.html#xterm_359
[5] https://man.archlinux.org/man/extra/xscreensaver/phosphor.6....
Oooof... Okay, but quicker, bcs I need to leave at some point in time. I'll skip most of the parts where we are in a loop anyways.
> Could that be because you haven't tried it and don't understand what you're talking about?
Admittedly, yes, I'm still trying to understand that.
> So your suggestion is to add a terminal to every gui program in existence?
Interesting idea in some way, no? Not each one individually, please. That would be equally bonkers. But in the end, looking at the final result, that sounds a bit like how I'd interpret your hybrid approach.
>> About your list what Dolphin needs to do but terminal apps don't: Yes, sure. A lot is going on. In the background. I don't have to wait for it to generate thumbnails. > You do if you want to see them
Sure, but then you are comparing apples and oranges. You compared it to pressing Tab.
>> I would avoid having so many files in a single directory. For organizational purposes. > So in other words, dolphin, [...] fuck [...] My music directory [...]
You are doing everything in that very quick way, right? "For organizational purposes."
I just gave it a try; Dolphin has no trouble at all with 100000 files in a directory. Yes, it took a second longer. Whatever you'd do with these files will be by a few magnitudes slower.
> But just as an experiment, why don't you "instantly" select the file named zcat.
Yes, did so. And now?
> Someone has never looked at a directory with subdirectories containing 100K files or more in a graphical file manager.
It only does that (with subdirectories) if you explicitly ask it to do so, by opening some Properties dialog. You are here definitely starting to make things up.
> Such as?
Nono, I'm fine with Dolphin. :-P
> ...Is your complaint here that you can't run these graphical terminal programs without having some sort of graphical environment running?
Why else should sane developers start to spend any serious efforts into applications based on this ancient tech stack? They would (obviously) of course just make a graphical application if it's graphical.
> When was the last time you used a terminal in an environment where you didn't have hardware for graphics support?
Welllll, not sooo often, fortunately. Virtually never, and when I do, I definitely don't need previews of cat pictures. Most of the times I just use graphical applications. Even some Java based ones! Boy, you wouldn't guess what they all do while loading, and how long that takes. It's actually wild. But I'm not using my PC for starting applications, right. I do that once. And then they run. ;)
> By the way, a bunch of actual "text-only" dumb terminals have had graphics support since the 1980s [1], and konsole has supported graphics for at least 5 years [2], and since 2022 it has supported the kitty graphics protocol [3]. Of course I'm sure you knew none of this
No. I'm sure it can do another 100 things that I'll never use. If you're in such a hurry all the time, you'll understand that I don't spend a lot of time in these things.
> [...] the graphics support that's been there without your knowledge for half a decade has probably caused a bunch of bugs that you've been having trouble with [...]
Read again what I wrote (hint: it was not equal to "sixel support will definitely break a terminal")! But, yeah, we'll never know. To what should we compare it with? The good news here for me is: The danger is already mostly over then, and if there were issues, at least big ones, they're then already sorted...
Also, as you can maybe already infer from our conversation so far: I don't use Konsole that often. Slightly more often I use the terminal integrated in Jetbrains IDE. That is even worse, unfortunately. Although without Sixel support. ^^
> Ooh I'm so impressed!
That's nice to hear. I just tried to answer your question, though.
> And then you thought windows 3 was good and never went back to a terminal.
No no, that narration would skip quite some decades and would make me sound smarter than I actually am. Sure, in the first Linux years, you are definitely vulnerable to the terminal cult, and you assume that you talk to very very smart persons instead of just priests, and you believe them a lot, before you understand that a lot of it is just an odd cult. And in a lot of cases (even today) you just sometimes have to use a terminal; particularly on Linux.
But really not for image thumbnails, and neither for management of my music collection. That actually never happened.
>> Even they made use of the 16 colors (or 8?!) > ...and you don't even know what your DOS machine was capable of or what it could and couldn't do.
No. That was when I was in elementary school. Just barely. I was happy when I was able to collect these things in other .bat files and were clever enough to combine these findings to something that somehow worked.
> This depended on a few factors, not least what type of graphics card (if any) you had and whether you were using a colour screen or an amber/green one.
Without colour screen/card, there would be no question whether it was 8 or 16 colors, right? It would then be 2.
> [...] 2. This is a false and contrived example - a "hello world" program is intentionally extremely minimal [...]
If you need more complexity (e.g. for layout of more complex content), your terminal app also has to deal with that in some way.
> This is empirically, demonstrably untrue, because the "launch application" action does not begin until the "key release" event has fired. Which is something you'd know if you understood how your interface works.
No, not at all. What are you "demonstrating" here. I've never seen the behavior you describe on ANY platform tbh. Also not in any terminal.
>> there are very basic image viewers without any features > ...No features at all, huh? Please provide examples.
I'll not do your web search for you. For some reason, I've imagemagick installed here, which seems to ship a very basic image viewer. It starts (at least for the image I've tried with) as instantly as the hello world apps.
And just for the case you still don't understand: I mean "instantly" in a practical meaning. You don't have to explain me once more that it can't be exactly 0 sec in a scientific meaning. ;)