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Comment by wang_li | Hacker News Reader

Yes. It’s called the X Window System and it’s been around since the ‘80s.

Also the problem here isn’t that iterm2 is trying to emulate terminals, it’s that it’s trying to do something more over the same network connection without making changes to the ssh protocol.

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X11 or any network transparent graphics protocol doesn't solve the problems that a terminal solves. how do you pipe data through multiple applications in one command using a GUI for example? nobody has been able to solve that in a practical way yet.

what we really want is being able to pipe semantic data that can be output to some kind of graphical device/interface that uses that semantic information to display the data using nice graphical interface elements.

> how do you pipe data through multiple applications in one command using a GUI for example? nobody has been able to solve that in a practical way yet.

How about Arcan?

https://arcan-fe.com/2021/04/12/introducing-pipeworld/

that looks pretty good, except i want to be able to use the pipes on a remote machine, yet still have the output graphically represented locally.

I haven't read through the blog posts in a hot minute, but I would be astonished if arcan isn't network transparent enough to let you do exactly that.

> X11 or any network transparent graphics protocol doesn't solve the problems that a terminal solves. how do you pipe data through multiple applications in one command using a GUI for example? nobody has been able to solve that in a practical way yet.

It seems to me that you are conflating the role of the terminal with the role of the shell. The terminal accepts streams of text and commands to instruct the terminal, so that software can accept input and present output. It doesn't fundamentally need to be aware of the concepts of pipes and commands to do that.

Of course, that doesn't stop iTerm2 from doing RCE by design, but at a conceptual level this is not a problem inherent to a terminal.

i am not conflating them, the problem is rather that the current terminals define or restrict what the shell can do. shells are being rewritten already. b they could not do what i want them to do without the terminals changing too, so the terminal needs to be next.

You can absolutely pipe programs together using a shell without a terminal. This also doesn't restric in any way the possibility to "output to some kind of graphical device/interface that uses that semantic information to display the data using nice graphical interface elements".

What is it specifically that you want to do which your favorite shell doesn't allow because it is restricted by terminals?

yes, i can write a program that takes data and displays it nicely. but in order to use graphics i need a second channel to send the graphic instructions, for x11, wayland or even MacOS or wndows. at that point i have two interfaces, the terminal and that graphics display. i want both to be in one. i want the terminal to be that graphical output. that currently is only possible through in-band escape sequences. that is the restriction i want to get rid of.

I don't fully understand the request. On one hand you don't want a second channel to send the graphics instructions, but on the other you don't want to use in-band escape sequences.

Maybe you'd be interested to learn about plan9's graphical terminal. Its window manager runs entirely within it, and all windows just represent multiplexed access to limited areas of the terminal.

On one hand you don't want a second channel to send the graphics instructions, but on the other you don't want to use in-band escape sequences

correct. the in-band sequences are dangerous and unwieldy. they don't convey enough information. they are a hack to work within the limitations if historical terminals. that's what this whole thread is about.

a separate graphics channel creates a separate window. then you have two windows. not good either. it needs to be one window, and considering that this window should be able to support multiple remote connections it needs to be local otherwise i would get a new window for each server i connect to. that works for some people, but not for me. and it needs to work through a single channel like ssh/mosh or another similar protocol and be forwardable.

so i want a third option. one approach is sending semantic data, letting the terminal interpret it and display it graphically. this is interesting because shells are already exploring semantic data. (elvish, murex, nushell, others...)

plan9 sounds interesting. i see several efforts to port aspects of it to linux. they all seem to have stalled. more work needs to be done here. that's what i am advocating.

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