I've mentioned this before, but the rise of the TUI is the simply the systemic failure of remote GUIs.

The primary value statement of TUIs is that they work over SSH with remote systems.

But now, we're hearing rumbles about the limitations of the "modern" terminals with regards to working well with a "rich" TUI. How a raw tty doesn't really cut it since it, at a minimum, can't detect key presses, only actual character/byte patterns. How there needs to be a new protocol, a "better" terminal client.

Of course when you go that route, then the current terminal emulators will need to be updated, or you'll be required to install a different terminal emulator that supports the new protocol. But that kind of defeats the theoretical, historical ubiquity of a TUI. It would not surprise me that many modern TUIs only work with an ANSI terminal.

Back in the day, we had systems like Visual Basic, Power Builder, SQLWindows. GUI/language systems particularly well suited for Client/Server DB development.

For a time, Firefox actually presented itself as a modern incarnation of these tools. Using XUL and JS for UI development, built in utilities to talk back to servers over HTTP. It was a platform for "Rich Internet Applications(tm)".

It didn't really take off, it wasn't documented very well, kind of buggy. It also required Firefox as a client. The potential was there, but not quite realized. Ajax hit the web browser in full force and that pretty much was the last nail. Now, you could use "any" browser for more interactive applications.

Of course, we advance to today, where many sites work in any browser as long as its Chrome. We have advanced applications that are no more than a Canvas element, with everything else being reinvented from scratch. "Have bitblt, will travel."

The browser is the closest thing we have to a universal remote GUI, but we all know the issues with it for many contexts. As an application platform, it may be ubiquitous, but that doesn't mean it's at all lightweight.

We used to have lightweight, remote GUI applications. Rootless X Window applications. Folk don't necessarily want the entire desktop, they just want an app, with some fields and buttons. You could slap them together with TCL/TK. Remember dtksh? We're not talking about trying to write Adobe Premiere or AutoCAD in these things. We just want some simple utilities, fields, icons, maybe a chart. Scrolling tables and a menu.

But we can't do that today, not readily, not easily.

So, we're kicked back to 1978 and the rise of the Smart Terminal, instead of 1984 and the rise of the X Terminal.

If folks are going to write out a custom client for a TUI, then may as well go the extra 10 feet and make it a remote GUI client. Reinvent all of the wheels as they go round, and round again.