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.
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 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… ^^;
@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 oh I think I found it. https://github.com/unconed/TermKit
@matzipan Thanks!
@phryk also I'm guessing you know libsixel? https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel
@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.
@phryk this repo at least is MIT licensed - the wording on PS 5.1 is a bit confusing but afaik that's just a legacy version
https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell
@mntmn Something like RStudio, but for Gnome. A GUI file manager with a terminal pane and a manual pane .
(Edit - typo)
@mntmn This reminded me of https://hisham.hm/userland/
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
i3 is a good place to start. Add a good terminal with context-integration on top of that (I use sakura) and it is a lovely place to work for developers, designers and admins.
@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.