Terminal borders that don't cost a cell

(joshka.net)

22 points | by vinhnx an hour ago ago

10 comments

  • hnlmorg 6 minutes ago ago

    Why wouldn’t this work over tmux? The authors claims don’t make a whole lot of sense because if this were a cell property, like any other CSI, then it’ll get rendered in the terminal emulator exactly as intended. And we know this because none of the other CSI sequences get garbled over multiplextors.

    But for there to be a dedicated section on how multiplexors wouldn’t work suggests to me that the authors already tried this via tmux.

    So I’m left wondering what they’ve done with the implementation of this to make that a problem.

    I spotted they are using DCS sequences. But even that shouldn’t be an issue itself.

  • joouha 14 minutes ago ago

    A much better alternative to this would be to for more terminal emulators to implement overstrike mode (DECSET 20, as available on the VK100). That way you could just draw border characters over existing text cells to achieve the same thing.

    Unfortunately mintty is the only terminal emulator I'm aware of which supports overstrike [0], as this would open up a world of new possibilities for TUI apps if more widely supported.

    [0] https://github.com/mintty/mintty/wiki/CtrlSeqs#overstrike

    • hnlmorg 2 minutes ago ago

      I’m not against overstrike, but I can think of one drawback of that solution: it becomes significantly harder to have rounded corners with a filled interior.

      But I’m not trying to argue for nor against either solution.

  • tptacek 20 minutes ago ago

    I love this work and everything else Ratatui does but I have to ask: if you're changing the terminal protocol and the terminal itself to do this, why not do something more ambitious; a full monospaced information-dense UI framework, a terminal designed for user interfaces, rather than one designed to replicate the limitations of dumb terminals?

  • montroser 30 minutes ago ago

    I appreciate the innovation happening with TUIs in these modern times. But, aesthetically, I have to say, I like my borders to have some breathing room, which gets lost in this particular treatment.

  • cobychapple 28 minutes ago ago

    Would be cool to get borders and lines out of copy/paste

  • 0c3ca83 17 minutes ago ago

    What if, dare I say it, we just served HTML over ssh, and let the browser render a proper UI, instead of layering hacks on top of hacks?

    • drdaeman 12 minutes ago ago

      > HTML

      > instead of hacks on top of hacks

      Afraid that’s a contradiction. In this role, HTML is a pile of hacks upon hacks that was not originally intended for UIs.

      But, yeah, people are trying to reinvent GUIs. By layering hacks over TTYs. If only there’d be some protocol for widgets and events over a stream connection…

      • masfuerte 4 minutes ago ago

        While we're figuring it out let's call this hypothetical protocol X.

        • ncruces a few seconds ago ago

          We could even use `ssh -X` to send it over SSH if that flag is otherwise unused.