Well, i remember a time when MS Word was run within DOS, yes, DOS as in the old operating system....so while i never used WordPerfect, i would not be surprized if such a thing existed.
This DE looks quite a bit like DOS - or at least the UI seen via apps within DOS. I didn't care much for DOS back in the day...but now, i like it...of course it might be simple rose-colored nostalgia. :-)
edit.com was a fantastic text editor. So easy, so intuitive. Never understood why nano wasn't able to compete. Anyways, I'm nowadays a user of "micro" on linux for text editing.
Hey, thanks. I've installed and tried out. The opening menu explained the key settings and it was just Edit from MSDOS. Very good, they even improved to exit the editor using ^Q.
I really don't know why so many people are against having a bar with menus and using the arrows to navigate. It is intuitive and easy, that editor really hit the spot. Thank you for the tip.
> so while i never used WordPerfect, i would not be surprized if such a thing existed.
WordPerfect competed heavily with Microsoft Word back in the DOS days. I made money in high school with side jobs teaching people to use WordPefect for DOS, and making utilities to convert and process WordPerfect files for small businesses.
I wrote all of my high school papers on WordPerfect for the Amiga, which was basically just a straight port of the text-only DOS version.
> WordPerfect competed heavily with Microsoft Word back in the DOS days.
In my part of the world, on MSDOS, MS Word was not even in competition with WordPerfect.
It was only with the advent of Windows (more specifically, Win95) that MS Word started seeing non-fractional percentage of usage compared to WordPerfect 5.1
Yeah, i had heard that WordPerfect was by far the preferred or better software in those days, though i never used. (To clarify: i was too young to know better, and simply used what was available to me at the time...which was only MS Word.)
I think in the days of DOS, the main players were WordPerfect and WordStar. Probably more than Word or any part of MS Office, MS Works was a decent cheap option that I saw a lot of places.
> WordPerfect competed heavily with Microsoft Word back in the DOS days.
Ha! I'd say it was more accurate to say that MS Word tried to compete with WordPerfect.
It was only with the rise of Windows that Word became a contender, and WordPerfect was relegated to trying to compete.
> a straight port of the text-only DOS version.
Just out of interest: WP was a Data General app. The DOS version was a port, as was the Amiga version, SCO Xenix, classic MacOS, all the others. The native app was a DG minicomputer program.
Part of its competitiveness in the pre-GUI era was that WordPerfect was very portable and the company ported it to almost every OS going, complete with its massive suite of state-of-the-art printer drivers.
If you were not using a DG Nova minicomputer then you were running a port.
But as GUIs became standard, they almost all included printing subsystems, using soft fonts rendered by the same code that rendered stuff on screen. Printers' own built-in fonts became irrelevant: GUIs just dumped bitmaps to the printer.
So WordPerfect's best-in-the-industry printer drivers, which supported every printer in the world and could make it do backflips, became irrelevant.
WP was still used for typing practice back in uuhh... 1998/1999, I think they intentionally used that instead of their Windows counterparts to minimize distractability.
I use Vim with SLIME. Multiple splits, multiple tabs, multiple applications, can type stuff into a buffer and then SLIME can send that as commands to the applications.
For example, I use `psql` in a split, and doing `C-c C-c` sends the statement in my current buffer (delineated with newlines) to `psql`. I do the same with all other console applications.
I mean, I agree it'd be interesting. But useful? Compared to basically any form of GUI be it X11 or Wayland, the resource usage is I would think on the order of 1% as much, and maybe less.
Still, in limited systems it matters. It could make the difference between usability and curiosity. Don't make the same argument people make about desktop web applications.
I was a user of DESQview and DESQview/X. It was like having a superpower. Especially in the days of very expensive UNIX workstations (which I could no way afford).
It looks like this just runs on Nix? For decades I have enjoyed doing development remotely on leased servers or VPSs, living in tmux and Emacs. This project looks like a good direction for some types of developers. I would appreciate if they added a quick start guide with different options for getting started.
That's wonderful – I have a VPS where disk space is a premium; I'd rather stick to the terminal for any required browsing than install a minimal graphical environment on disk!
(A note to Ubuntu users that browsh is incompatible with the default snap distribution of Firefox; you'll have to install it from a PPA.)
While I love CLI and terminals this is like going backward, heh. Instead of making lightweight and lighting fast GUIs where you can render all your terminals and some other graphics, people try to form TUIs again.
Yeah, they were great in 80s where HW was seriously underpowered. I run minimal IceWM and it looks and works great, and its quick :)
> While I love CLI and terminals this is like going backward, heh...
Maybe so...and, yes, somewhat it is utilizing lightweight options...however, more and more, i am using either bare GUIs or legit TUIs for less distraction...a sort of minimalism. I'd like to think that i could be super productive only using TUIs, because it might make me feel like some cool elite hacker...but i know that's not the case always. However, more and more I'm recently gravitating towards TUIs, or at least more minimal GUIs, for the semi-forced focus. I'm learning about myself more and more, and more buttons is not great.
Small example: my favorite GUI text editor is Kate (from KDE). i know it has bells and whistles, but since i keep things to a minimum, it sort of stays out of my way, and helps me write more - both prose and code, etc. What i have noticed over the decades of my usage of software is that for some areas - like writing - if i use more comprehensive tools - say, like VSCode - then i will keep playing with so many settings, and stuff gets in my way; i inadvertantly let myself get too distracted from getting stuff done. On the TUI side, i can use VIM, nano, micro, etc.and I'm quite productive as well. At least, that's what works for me. So, what you might call backwards, might be more like coming full circle for the productivity aspect, at least in ways that make sense for some people, not all of course. :-)
Oh I agree with you :) I love TUIs myself.. But we talk about Desktop OS like in TUI.. with is.. well.. hardcore :)
Most of my tools are TUI really, because its much esier to develop. Code reusability is huge. You wrote some nice interactive TList class? Cool, you can reuse it easly in other TUI projects.
Today world is a bit multitasking, so having TUI based Desktop is very limiting imo. Yeah, distractions.. Thats I think personal thing. I run old OS with 4 virtual desktops because one desktop is not really enough. Desktop 1 is generic. Desktop 2 is work. Desktop 3 is usually some Network Simulations I do.
Desktop 2 and 3 usually have their own Xserver running, displaying stuff from remote servers. So, leaving GUI is not an option. Just use it smartly :)
And yeah, I use ViM ether in terminal or gViM (native Win32).
> ...we talk about Desktop OS like in TUI.. with is.. well.. hardcore
Excellent point; that is pretty hardcore! :-)
> ...I run old OS with 4 virtual desktops...
This is quite interesting, because i know a few acquaintences and friends who also use this approach of several desktops (each maybe with a dedicated app for example) to help them get really focused and productive! It seems to work for them really well...but i've never been able to have it click for me. I mean, i get the idea, and it sounds good...but for some reason it doesn't give me what i need...or, well, maybe its "out of sight, out of mind"...and then i forget about those other screens/desktops, etc. Of course, the possibility could absolutely be that i'm simply "holding it wrong"/using this approach in the wrong/less ideal way. :-)
Latency on modern Wayland and/or X11 is just horrible. I'm constantly immersing myself on tty1 and tty2 with tmux, using tty8 for X11 with a Browser just for collab/communication software.
This is pretty slick! I can already see myself nodding in approval. It’s like having a tmux session but on steroids—minimalism at its finest. For anyone who loves their terminal, this feels like the ultimate upgrade.
* A complete multiwindow console environment you can access locally or over an SSH session
* An extremely low-resource multi-app session for very low-end devices, such as a Raspberry Pi Zero or the like, where you have under a gigabyte of RAM
* A very fast very low-resource environment for a console-only server that happens to have a big hi-res LCD attached
* I am less sure but this could potentially be highly accessible for users with low vision or users of screenreaders.
I do not plan to try this but I do wonder how well the terminal version of WordPerfect would work in this.
Also, if sixel support were added, it could support graphics. See:
https://github.com/taviso/wpunix/wiki/Terminals
If sixels somehow are already supported, then it does support graphics.
Wordgrinder is a modern text-mode word processor. (Distinct from a text editor.)
https://github.com/davidgiven/wordgrinder
This discussion is bringing back some memories. Particularly my first time using Wordstar 2000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar
I want to live in a world where all the vintage Curses like apps work on modern systems. Just like Lotus 123
https://github.com/taviso/123elf
Well, i remember a time when MS Word was run within DOS, yes, DOS as in the old operating system....so while i never used WordPerfect, i would not be surprized if such a thing existed.
This DE looks quite a bit like DOS - or at least the UI seen via apps within DOS. I didn't care much for DOS back in the day...but now, i like it...of course it might be simple rose-colored nostalgia. :-)
> i remember a time when MS Word was run within DOS
The penultimate DOS version of MS Word is freeware. MS released Word 5.5 as freeware as a Y2K fix for all previous versions.
It's quite usable. I've written articles using it.
You can run it under Linux or macOS easily using DOSemu, on 64-bit Windows with VDOS+.
I wrote about how, with a pic of it working:
https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/28/friday_foss_fest_runn...
Sadly, the last ever version, 6.0, is much better, with more keystrokes in common with Word 6 for Windows and Mac, and that's not freeware.
edit.com was a fantastic text editor. So easy, so intuitive. Never understood why nano wasn't able to compete. Anyways, I'm nowadays a user of "micro" on linux for text editing.
I totally agree.
I use Tilde myself, which is very close.
https://github.com/gphalkes/tilde
I have written about it:
"Tilde, a text editor that doesn't work like it's 1976"
https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/17/tilde_text_editor/
Nobody got the gag in the title. 1976 was when Vi first appeared.
Hey, thanks. I've installed and tried out. The opening menu explained the key settings and it was just Edit from MSDOS. Very good, they even improved to exit the editor using ^Q.
I really don't know why so many people are against having a bar with menus and using the arrows to navigate. It is intuitive and easy, that editor really hit the spot. Thank you for the tip.
Oh wow, that's so cool! And dig that blue background! Thanks for sharing!
> so while i never used WordPerfect, i would not be surprized if such a thing existed.
WordPerfect competed heavily with Microsoft Word back in the DOS days. I made money in high school with side jobs teaching people to use WordPefect for DOS, and making utilities to convert and process WordPerfect files for small businesses.
I wrote all of my high school papers on WordPerfect for the Amiga, which was basically just a straight port of the text-only DOS version.
> WordPerfect competed heavily with Microsoft Word back in the DOS days.
In my part of the world, on MSDOS, MS Word was not even in competition with WordPerfect.
It was only with the advent of Windows (more specifically, Win95) that MS Word started seeing non-fractional percentage of usage compared to WordPerfect 5.1
Yeah, i had heard that WordPerfect was by far the preferred or better software in those days, though i never used. (To clarify: i was too young to know better, and simply used what was available to me at the time...which was only MS Word.)
I think in the days of DOS, the main players were WordPerfect and WordStar. Probably more than Word or any part of MS Office, MS Works was a decent cheap option that I saw a lot of places.
> WordPerfect competed heavily with Microsoft Word back in the DOS days.
Ha! I'd say it was more accurate to say that MS Word tried to compete with WordPerfect.
It was only with the rise of Windows that Word became a contender, and WordPerfect was relegated to trying to compete.
> a straight port of the text-only DOS version.
Just out of interest: WP was a Data General app. The DOS version was a port, as was the Amiga version, SCO Xenix, classic MacOS, all the others. The native app was a DG minicomputer program.
Part of its competitiveness in the pre-GUI era was that WordPerfect was very portable and the company ported it to almost every OS going, complete with its massive suite of state-of-the-art printer drivers.
If you were not using a DG Nova minicomputer then you were running a port.
But as GUIs became standard, they almost all included printing subsystems, using soft fonts rendered by the same code that rendered stuff on screen. Printers' own built-in fonts became irrelevant: GUIs just dumped bitmaps to the printer.
So WordPerfect's best-in-the-industry printer drivers, which supported every printer in the world and could make it do backflips, became irrelevant.
WP was still used for typing practice back in uuhh... 1998/1999, I think they intentionally used that instead of their Windows counterparts to minimize distractability.
Good on you that you made money that way in high school!
This DE looks quite a bit like DOS - or at least the UI seen via apps within DOS.
I'm definitely getting Turbo Pascal 5 vibes. Not 6, though, because that added ASCII drop-shadows.
> Not 6, though, because that added ASCII drop-shadows.
I see a drop shadow on a button; not sure if that specific console application had the button or if the button is part of the DE.
WP5 was basically 40x60 (or whatever) in DOS. I still remember the royal blue background.
WP6 also ran in DOS but had a full fledged GUI. Ran a bit slow on the 486 but wow!
This is not correct. WP6 ran just fine even on a 286 and was still a text mode application.
I use Vim with SLIME. Multiple splits, multiple tabs, multiple applications, can type stuff into a buffer and then SLIME can send that as commands to the applications.
For example, I use `psql` in a split, and doing `C-c C-c` sends the statement in my current buffer (delineated with newlines) to `psql`. I do the same with all other console applications.
It looks impressive but it duplicates a tonne of existing functionality from TWIN, which has been around for about 25 years or more.
https://github.com/cosmos72/twin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_(windowing_system)
And both of them seem to re-implement their own, inferior, versions of the TurboVision text-mode "widget toolkit":
https://tvision.sourceforge.net/
https://github.com/magiblot/tvision
A merger could result in something greater than the sum of its parts.
It would be useful if there are a comparison for their resources usage especially for people who need them in constrained resources environments.
Hmmm.
I mean, I agree it'd be interesting. But useful? Compared to basically any form of GUI be it X11 or Wayland, the resource usage is I would think on the order of 1% as much, and maybe less.
Still, in limited systems it matters. It could make the difference between usability and curiosity. Don't make the same argument people make about desktop web applications.
hehe it looks like DESQview]1] for MSDOS from 1985 :) Amazing idea!
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview
I was a user of DESQview and DESQview/X. It was like having a superpower. Especially in the days of very expensive UNIX workstations (which I could no way afford).
It looks like this just runs on Nix? For decades I have enjoyed doing development remotely on leased servers or VPSs, living in tmux and Emacs. This project looks like a good direction for some types of developers. I would appreciate if they added a quick start guide with different options for getting started.
What are the key commands to use this TUI?
Don't find details and trying the usual suspects didn't work.
Also, it was needed to install a missing library: sudo apt install libncursesw5-dev
It is based upon AppCUI. Try using your mouse.
I'm noticing that desktop-tui - at least over ssh - oesn't handle terminal resizing/SIGWINCH. Let me cogitate on why this might be the case.
I like the idea, but almost everyone needs a browser these days... Unless you work solo and don't need MS Teams/Google Meet/etc
There's browsh, a version of Firefox that renders in a terminal: https://www.brow.sh/
That's wonderful – I have a VPS where disk space is a premium; I'd rather stick to the terminal for any required browsing than install a minimal graphical environment on disk!
(A note to Ubuntu users that browsh is incompatible with the default snap distribution of Firefox; you'll have to install it from a PPA.)
https://github.com/fathyb/carbonyl should be perfect for this
Reminds me of vtm
https://github.com/directvt/vtm
does it do session management (like screen/tmux, meaning i can detach from a session and reattach later) or do i have to run it in screen?
While I love CLI and terminals this is like going backward, heh. Instead of making lightweight and lighting fast GUIs where you can render all your terminals and some other graphics, people try to form TUIs again.
Yeah, they were great in 80s where HW was seriously underpowered. I run minimal IceWM and it looks and works great, and its quick :)
> While I love CLI and terminals this is like going backward, heh...
Maybe so...and, yes, somewhat it is utilizing lightweight options...however, more and more, i am using either bare GUIs or legit TUIs for less distraction...a sort of minimalism. I'd like to think that i could be super productive only using TUIs, because it might make me feel like some cool elite hacker...but i know that's not the case always. However, more and more I'm recently gravitating towards TUIs, or at least more minimal GUIs, for the semi-forced focus. I'm learning about myself more and more, and more buttons is not great.
Small example: my favorite GUI text editor is Kate (from KDE). i know it has bells and whistles, but since i keep things to a minimum, it sort of stays out of my way, and helps me write more - both prose and code, etc. What i have noticed over the decades of my usage of software is that for some areas - like writing - if i use more comprehensive tools - say, like VSCode - then i will keep playing with so many settings, and stuff gets in my way; i inadvertantly let myself get too distracted from getting stuff done. On the TUI side, i can use VIM, nano, micro, etc.and I'm quite productive as well. At least, that's what works for me. So, what you might call backwards, might be more like coming full circle for the productivity aspect, at least in ways that make sense for some people, not all of course. :-)
Oh I agree with you :) I love TUIs myself.. But we talk about Desktop OS like in TUI.. with is.. well.. hardcore :)
Most of my tools are TUI really, because its much esier to develop. Code reusability is huge. You wrote some nice interactive TList class? Cool, you can reuse it easly in other TUI projects.
Today world is a bit multitasking, so having TUI based Desktop is very limiting imo. Yeah, distractions.. Thats I think personal thing. I run old OS with 4 virtual desktops because one desktop is not really enough. Desktop 1 is generic. Desktop 2 is work. Desktop 3 is usually some Network Simulations I do. Desktop 2 and 3 usually have their own Xserver running, displaying stuff from remote servers. So, leaving GUI is not an option. Just use it smartly :)
And yeah, I use ViM ether in terminal or gViM (native Win32).
> ...we talk about Desktop OS like in TUI.. with is.. well.. hardcore
Excellent point; that is pretty hardcore! :-)
> ...I run old OS with 4 virtual desktops...
This is quite interesting, because i know a few acquaintences and friends who also use this approach of several desktops (each maybe with a dedicated app for example) to help them get really focused and productive! It seems to work for them really well...but i've never been able to have it click for me. I mean, i get the idea, and it sounds good...but for some reason it doesn't give me what i need...or, well, maybe its "out of sight, out of mind"...and then i forget about those other screens/desktops, etc. Of course, the possibility could absolutely be that i'm simply "holding it wrong"/using this approach in the wrong/less ideal way. :-)
It has graphics. They are just extremely low resolution, restricted to 16 colors, hardwired to dark mode and generated by abusing the terminal.
TUIs are fine if they mean better thought-out command line interfaces, but I can't see the sense in then if they actively try to recreate GUIs.
Latency on modern Wayland and/or X11 is just horrible. I'm constantly immersing myself on tty1 and tty2 with tmux, using tty8 for X11 with a Browser just for collab/communication software.
Just use Emacs
This is pretty slick! I can already see myself nodding in approval. It’s like having a tmux session but on steroids—minimalism at its finest. For anyone who loves their terminal, this feels like the ultimate upgrade.
I agree.
I can imagine multiple use cases...
* A complete multiwindow console environment you can access locally or over an SSH session
* An extremely low-resource multi-app session for very low-end devices, such as a Raspberry Pi Zero or the like, where you have under a gigabyte of RAM
* A very fast very low-resource environment for a console-only server that happens to have a big hi-res LCD attached
* I am less sure but this could potentially be highly accessible for users with low vision or users of screenreaders.
[dead]