jokeyrhyme@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•In 2025, what features do you want in a terminal emulator? (that currently aren't widely available or at all)English
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11 days agoOkay, let’s go with xterm
running bash
, where the user ran ls
, so xterm
-> bash
-> ls
…
ls
never talks toxterm
directly, it’s stdout/stderr are provided bybash
bash
effectively outputs a grid of characters toxterm
,xterm
doesn’t know about prompts or words or line feeds, just the grid- every time
ls
outputs a line,bash
adds a row of output to the grid that it sends toxterm
- if there’s not enough space for a new row,
bash
discards the top-most row, moves all other rows up by one row, and then inserts the row for thels
output
Now imagine a hypothetical fork of bash
or some other new shell …
- the only thing different is the direction that the rows move off the edge of the screen when running out of space, that’s all
Thus, this is entirely a shell problem, with a shell solution
However, what I’ve neglected to mention so far is that terminal emulators and shells are almost certainly optimised for rows dropping off the top edge and new rows being added to the bottom edge
So, the role of a terminal emulator in this scenario could be to provide ANSI control characters or other protocol for operating just as quickly in the opposite direction, sure
I know Google just donated to Trump’s inauguration, and also does all the stupid surveillance capitalism crap that Google does, but I just compared prices, and Google Workspace is a few dollars per month cheaper per user than Proton is, for my needs (family, custom domain names, etc)
We’ve been on Proton for a few years, and it’s fine, but we do also have Pixel Android phones, and not using Google services constantly feels like swimming upstream, plus all family members also still end up having to use Google services for work, anyway
It’s just not practical for me to de-Google, which is a shame, so I think I’ll be switching in a few months, unless pricing changes significantly :S