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little productivity thing for linux that i would like: terminal integration of the XDG (?) "Recent" folder. make it an actual Folder ~/Recent with links to the files, or a FUSE fs. i often have to integrate console and desktop tools and this would make it less painful.

also would be nice to have a little more mouse interactivity integration in terminals. when i type `ls`, give me an icon next to each result that has a context menu or lets me drag that file handle to another app, or copy the path / open with. i.e. make a hybrid of file explorer and terminal.

minute

a DE on linux could really embrace and amplify the fact that linux people have to use the terminal a lot. instead of trying to hide that and emulate windows or mac os, integrate this duality really well.

@mntmn This exists. It is called Emacs.

(I will show myself out)

@algernon i am an emacs user. notmuch-emacs is my primary email client. but i'm not talking only about text. i work a lot with kicad, freecad, inkscape, gimp, libreoffice calc, video and audio players etc etc.

@mntmn @algernon FreeCAD goes some way with its Python REPL, but it could still be improved. I suspect KiCAD has something like that, but haven't seen it.

@mntmn As somebody who might start developing their own DE in the next couple years… would you mind telling me a bit more?

I read the rest of your thread and most of this would seem to be stuff that shells and terminals have to do, not the DE.

@mntmn A thing that I've personally been pondering for a long time is the addition of a new basic stream besides stdin, -out and -error to hold structured data that can be visualized while a program is running. Things from simple progress bars for cp to complex graphs could be done this way – but I kinda think I'd have to write a new OS from scratch for that… ^^;

@matzipan That's gonna be tough on FreeBSD. 😅

Does powershell have an extra stream for structured data or some such thing?

// @mntmn

@phryk hehe. If memory serves me right, yes, powershell has these structured streams in between processes.

@matzipan So, like more structured pipes? Nce, but I'm more interested in providing something the terminal can interpret and visualize.

@phryk well you can always represent structured information how ever you want if enough structure exists. The problem is that currently that structure doesn't exist in posix.

I remeber in the 2010s there was some webkit-based terminal solution which was aiming to do something like you are suggesting, but I could never remember or find it any more 😓

@matzipan Yes, exactly – and I'd want something that is designed well enough to become a de-facto standard supported by most POSIX-y systems.

As for a webkit-based terminal… thanks, but no thanks. ^^;

@phryk the webkit part was an easy way to give interactivity in a small project. The important part was the rich terminal features.

@phryk given that Powershell runs on MacOS and Linux it might not be that unrealistic!
nushell could also be worth checking out. But it's again a structured stream thing so not exactly what you're looking for

@dngrs Huh, I actually was not aware of that. Is it straight-up FOSS? I mean I won't use it personally because MS, but code access would be nice for further research.

@mntmn Something like RStudio, but for Gnome. A GUI file manager with a terminal pane and a manual pane .
(Edit - typo)

@mntmn

That's something Dolphin actually does. Go to your recent files, open the integrated terminal and boom

@mntmn NB: you can open the terminal through the command palette: press CTRL + I and type "terminal"

@mntmn if linux people have to use terminal at all, their DE/distro has failed it's job. Regular user should never ever need to use terminal for anything.

(But as a heavy terminal user, I'd appreciate such Recent folder :)

@mntmn I really like the idea of introducing typical GUI/mouse interactivity with the terminal results.

It would architecturally require a fairly different implementation of the terminal and likely even a lot of the current POSIX compatible commands. But it would be really cool. Maybe enough with some special escape string to feed back non-ASCII data.

Props for the idea.