Text mode toys

[john]

hi!
well..never heard of any Desktop/windowing system for the console, but did ya 
check out aaxine...nice toy...
so ya allready have a video player ;)
cheers
john

>On Sunday 09 October 2005 23:51, John Richard Moser wrote:
> 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.