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GTK+ TTY Port

Posted by michael on from the curses-foiled-again dept.

An anonymous reader writes: "FootNotes is reporting about what might be the coolest thing since textmode Quake: a curses-based GTK-2.0 port called Cursed GTK. This not only makes it possible to give Gnome the look and feel of Contiki, but also brings many real opportunities, such as remote logins where X forwarding is not possible, or remote logins over very slow modem lines. Screenshots here, here, here and here! Patches for bugs are welcomed by the authors."

7 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. A similar technology: 1986 WordPerfect on VAX/VMS by unfortunateson · · Score: 4, Informative

    Back in the minicomputer days, WordPerfect corporation created a reasonable port of WP onto the VAX/VMS environment. It supported a number of terminals, many of which were text-only.

    Mind you, this was in the days of DOS WordPerfect dominance, WPWin was relatively new.

    But the coolest thing was graphics mode for non-graphics terminals. They abused the font download capabilities of the VT220-series terminals that were the standard for the day to create 'mosaics'. Decent pictures of bitmaps could be created. I could recognize B&W bitmaps pretty well. Lousy for pr0n, but good enough that a letter-writing system we set up had recognizable signatures.

    --
    Design for Use, not Construction!
  2. Charva does the same for Java by llouver · · Score: 5, Informative

    For a character base port of javax/swing...

    see charva: http://www.pitman.co.za/projects/charva/
    screenshot: http://www.pitman.co.za/projects/charva/images/cha rva1.png

  3. Re:Okay but by multi+io · · Score: 4, Informative
    GDK pixmaps

    Judging from the screenshots, those just don't get rendered at all. Generally, the mapping algorithm to character cells seems to be quite smart though...

  4. Because non CLI text interfaces are useful. by hey! · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, for the hack value I suppose.

    However, the utility of non-command oriented text interfaces is pretty well established. There is, of course, the venerable curses; pretty sophisticated non command text interfaces were the norm on MS-DOS in the pre-windows days. These often featured mouse input, which combined with text display is enough for a wide variety of applications. Don't know if this GTK supports mouse inputs. From the screenshots I'd guess not which somewhat limits its utility.

    As an example of a non-command oriented text interface in common use today, look no farther than your BIOS setup program.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  5. Re:Eye Candy by starseeker · · Score: 4, Informative

    TurboVision has apparently been somewhat modernized from the original source release. Here's the website:

    http://tvision.sourceforge.net/

    --
    "I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
  6. Re:But? by Wolfrider · · Score: 4, Informative

    --Ever heard of aalib?

    --
    .
    == WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
  7. Re:Okay but by uhoreg · · Score: 4, Informative
    Widget alignments when whatever widgets you align don't fall exactly on their equivalent ascii places?
    GTK uses a container model for widget placements (i.e. you put the widgets in containers, and everything gets auto-sized based on the contents). The placement of widgets isn't pixel-based. So this isn't an issue, at least in properly written GTK programs.
    Alright, I'm off to recompile X-Chat.
    Cursed GTK uses LD_PRELOAD, so there's no recompilation needed. Unless the program is statically linked, of course.
    --

    To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three persons, two of them absent.