Text mode toys

[Grant Edwards]

On 2005-10-09, John Richard Moser <nigelenki at comcast.net> wrote:

> This is just a hypothetical, but what kinds of things can
> feasibly be done without X?

Anything that doesn't require graphics. I'm assuming by
"without X" you mean without bitmapped graphics -- otherwise
you can always run another bit-mapped graphics windowing
system.

> 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.

Sure, It's been done.  Back in around '87 or'88, there was a
text-mode, windowing, multi-tasking DOS extension that was used
by quite a few people at one place I worked.  I don't remember
what it was called.

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