Text mode toys

[John Richard Moser]

This is just a hypothetical, but what kinds of things can feasibly be
done without X?  Most of "Anything" is possible of course but truly to
what degree can we take things, just to inspire some thought?

Considering that Midnight Commander acts like Norton Total Commander,
and that we can do a few other nice things like with MP3Blaster, I'd
think that it'd be possible to make a text mode interface similar to the
GUI interfaces.  For example, consider the below layout.

Scale:  1 char == 2 char (0.5)

 ----------------------------------------
|Application Area                        | <-- upper char used
|                 H: 24                  |
|                 W: 80                  |
|                                        |
|                                        |
|                                        |
|                                        |
|                                        |
|                                        |
|                                        |
|                                        |
|                                        |
|__________________________________ _____| <-- lower char used
|Task Area                         |Desk |
|                                  |Area |
 ----------------------------------------

68
 2 - 34
 4 - 17

[1][2][3]
[4][5][6]
[7][8][9]

First off, we'd reserve the Control-Alt (^@) prefix for the "window
manager" with relation to letters and numbers.

The "Task Area" could list tasks in the current "desktop."  This would
be like a task bar.  Tasks could use an "attention" hint to make their
button light up red.  The task area could hold max 12 items, 4 of 17
characters wide per row, which may be grouped.  They'd be accessed by
^@t, which would move focus to the task tray area; the arrow keys would
be used to select a task; selecting a grouped task would give a list of
"windows" to switch into.  Current selected task would highlight blue.

The "Desktop Area" or "Desk Area" would give a list of 9 "desktops" to
allow for up to 12x9 == 108 "tasks" running.  If the "attention" hint is
given and not yet acknowledged, the desktop button for the
attention-demanding task would highlight red.  Current selected desktop
would highlight blue.  The ^@d combination would switch into the Desk Area.

The "Application Area" would be selected with ^@a.  It would house the
application itself.  Most actions relating to the text WM would give
control back to the Application Area anyway.

I'd guess it could be done with ncurses; but for flexibility it may be
better to work off a simple console "tool kit" designed for the task.
Not my bag though.

Utilizing the frame buffer, it may be possible to also embed a graphical
task like links into the application area.  It may also be possible to
get the mouse working with this kind of thing, as it does with Midnight
Commander.

Anyway, in the end my point comes down to this:  does this look
particularly useful for anything?  Aside from of course reducing memory
footprint and retro-fitting your computer with what could have been if
Commodore had taken over instead of Microsoft, would this have
particular uses?

I've attached 2 mock-ups here, in case anyone cares that far.  Took me 5
minutes to make.
-- 
All content of all messages exchanged herein are left in the
Public Domain, unless otherwise explicitly stated.

    Creative brains are a valuable, limited resource. They shouldn't be
    wasted on re-inventing the wheel when there are so many fascinating
    new problems waiting out there.
                                                 -- Eric Steven Raymond
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: conwm.txt
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20051009/4121bbfd/attachment.txt>
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: conwm_app.txt
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20051009/4121bbfd/attachment-0001.txt>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 256 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20051009/4121bbfd/attachment.sig>