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Hotwire: a combined terminal/GUI for GNU/Linux (Free Software Magazine)

Hotwire: a combined terminal/GUI for GNU/Linux (Free Software Magazine)

Posted Jun 25, 2008 2:33 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to: Hotwire: a combined terminal/GUI for GNU/Linux (Free Software Magazine) by walters
Parent article: Hotwire: a combined terminal/GUI for GNU/Linux (Free Software Magazine)

I don't really see it any different from any other Unix shell in terms of python-specific
commands. 

Every shell has their own set of built-ins. Stuff that conflicts and may break scripts and
such. Pointing at some symbolic link vs trapping commands vs wrappers around library
functions.. what's the difference? Different ways to accomplish the same goals. 


The only thing I'd care about is avoiding depending on the mouse for _anything_. My favorite
media player is Mplayer for a very good reason (and it's nothing against gstreamer...).
Non-use of the mouse == faster + less chance of ruining my wrists. It's beyond just personal
bigotry, there is a serious ergonomic issue going on here.

Also.. if it was possible to use this hotwire from a virtual console or just a plain xterm,
then that would be fantastic. Screen beats the absolute living crap out of any sort of tabbed
system I've ever seen in my life.

Basically I have nothing against nice friendly gui systems.. that's very good. Even if you
still end up requiring a special python gui to run hotwire, I would like to be able to disable
the tab bar, menu bar, and the scroll bar and still be able to use it.

Just my 10 cents. If you ignore me I am not going to start badmouthing you or anything like
that. :)


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Hotwire: a combined terminal/GUI for GNU/Linux (Free Software Magazine)

Posted Jun 25, 2008 10:16 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Every shell has their own set of built-ins. Stuff that conflicts and may break scripts and such. Pointing at some symbolic link vs trapping commands vs wrappers around library functions.. what's the difference? Different ways to accomplish the same goals.
Yeah, but this isn't really like that, not yet. This is like it would be if you had a shell with extensible builtins (like bash or zsh) but for which you needed to know if commands were built-in or not, because built-in commands had a different syntax.

(As an aside, has anyone ever seen the loadable dynamic builtin stuff in bash used? I've seen loadable builtins in zsh used occasionally, but never the corresponding bash feature.)

Hotwire: a combined terminal/GUI for GNU/Linux (Free Software Magazine)

Posted Jun 25, 2008 17:56 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

It depends on how you look at it.

With python you avoid the source --> compile --> linker cycle. You just edit the source code,
add your functions to a library or to a directory, and the compiling and that sort of thing is
done on the fly. 

With bash you'd have to get the source code and edit it to extend it, unless you use a plugin
or extension feature like you mentioned just now.

That being said, I like the idea of a script-based shell. It's very similar to Emacs.. the
major difference here is that hotwire isn't going to pretend its a editor to trick programmers
into trying it out. :)

After playing around with hotwire I've decided that I like the concept very much. If the
keybindings can be made to be theme-able then it should be simple to make my own screen-like,
vi-like bindings.

Any thoughts on a mode-based shell? :)

Hotwire: a combined terminal/GUI for GNU/Linux (Free Software Magazine)

Posted Jun 26, 2008 12:34 UTC (Thu) by mish (guest, #52694) [Link]

> After playing around with hotwire I've decided that I like the concept very much. If the
> keybindings can be made to be theme-able then it should be simple to make my own
screen-like,
> vi-like bindings.
> 
> Any thoughts on a mode-based shell? :)

I've typed up some thoughts before in this thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/hotwire-shell/browse_threa...

I'm hacking on other stuff at the moment though, so don't hold your breath.  But new hackers
are welcome if you want to help move this forward :)

Hotwire: a combined terminal/GUI for GNU/Linux (Free Software Magazine)

Posted Jun 30, 2008 19:05 UTC (Mon) by massimiliano (subscriber, #3048) [Link]

There is work ongoing on making a free "posh", google for it...
It could be nice if the projects cooperated :-)

Hotwire: a combined terminal/GUI for GNU/Linux (Free Software Magazine)

Posted Jun 26, 2008 12:53 UTC (Thu) by mish (guest, #52694) [Link]

> Also.. if it was possible to use this hotwire from a virtual console or just a plain xterm,
> then that would be fantastic. Screen beats the absolute living crap out of any sort of
tabbed
> system I've ever seen in my life.
> 
> Basically I have nothing against nice friendly gui systems.. that's very good. Even if you
> still end up requiring a special python gui to run hotwire, I would like to be able to
disable
> the tab bar, menu bar, and the scroll bar and still be able to use it.

I definitely expect that everything should be able to be done without a mouse - I think that
is possible now, and I have some other ideas that would extend that (though they're not at the
top of my list to do yet ...)
http://groups.google.com/group/hotwire-shell/browse_threa...

Also, the code is intended to be split so that the core code is separate from, and does not
depend on, the UI code.  (Note this split is currently not clean - there are dependencies).
This would allow other UIs to be written, including a UI that can run inside an xterm.  It
should also (eventually) allow the core code to run on a remote machine while the GUI runs
locally.

But don't hold your breath (unless you want to help make the split cleaner and write the xterm
UI ;-)

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