I wish we had a "cool" GUI toolkit. GUIs are way better at this stuff. Adding point and click is so close to being a GUI, the only possible reason this is a TUI is fashion.
I wish we had a "cool" GUI toolkit. GUIs are way better at this stuff. Adding point and click is so close to being a GUI, the only possible reason this is a TUI is fashion.
How are GUIs "way better at this stuff"? I can't see it, but would like to understand how you feel that a GUI can improve on the management of automated processes at scale.
Just one example of the top of my head: filter by labels, sort by name, select a few pods using ctrl+click, view logs. GUIs were super quick at this sort of stuff in the 90s. I use kubectl myself, but when I see stuff like this it really seems like people just want GUIs again.
There's two different levels to this imho, a tui is usually still a non-bloated self-contained binary that can run on windowless server envirorments just fine.
TUIs can have GUI like affordances UX/UI wise regardless of if they use the terminal as the contract or a window server/gui lib
Idk if you are managing k8s stuff you are probably in a terminal already. Staying in a terminal is nice. Plus having persistent multiplexer sessions is a big deal in locked down corporate environments.
I appreciate the tui.
Seems like a task for the window manager and a remote access protocol.
That is great until you have 12 similar windows open and your os window manager smooshes them into one indistinguishable stack. And if I want a window from app A to stick side by side with a corresponding window from app B you have few options. As opposed to tmux I can organize however I want and combine any arbitrary apps into a workspace. Plus RAM usage difference is night and day.
Seems like you selected the wrong window manager for your task then...
I've been using https://github.com/longbridge/gpui-component
Imgui is also good for this
I think X11 is the GUI version of terminal interface
we need more experiments with X11 interfaces
How would a "cool" GUI Toolkit look like for you?
Most common things power users seem to want from TUIs on desktop:
- Easy efficient remote access. Pixel streaming and things like GTK Broadway are out. Needs a proper protocol/standard that would send styling-neutral primitives (and that is not X11 forwarding), and the entire toolkit architecture built around that. Something like SPICE/QXL but more semantics-aware? Not sure, might be too low level and chatty.
- Staying in the terminal. This is a matter of window management, though a toolkit can offer good defaults so this doesn't feel janky.
- Keyboard-first. Trivial. "GUI is for filthy mouse casuals" is a ludicrous idea.
- Low bloat. Web and things like GTK Broadway are out.
I haven't seen two similar opinions on actual architecture and stack, however being available in Rust will be a great start.
That's what the web is for: https://ui.shadcn.com/