Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> No, it feels awkward when you sit at a text terminal that's using ANSI 
> escape codes to generate colours and block graphics characters to "draw" 
> a "graphical" user interface. I mean, why not just have a /real/ 
> graphical user interface?

  Do you understand the concept of bandwidth? And that it can be quite
limited?

  The VT protocol was designed back when you were lucky if you could
transfer than a few kilobytes per second, so they had to maximize what
you could do while at the same time minimizing the need to transfer data.

  Today this might be more obsolete than it was 20 years ago, but there
are still benefits to that. The standard is quite well-established and
has been around forever, so almost every system in existence supports it.
Also, being text-based (and low-bandwidth) you can create or port terminal
emulators to almost any system with a screen and a keyboard, even very
exotic ones. For instance, it's pretty common for unix-savvy people to
have a terminal emulator on their cellphones so that they can contact
their computer or whatever remotely. A remote GUI would simply not do.

> I'm not arguing that the CLI is useless. I'm arguing that ASCII-art 
> "graphical" UIs are silly.

  Sometimes you have to resort to them to organize what is displayed.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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