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WebTUI – A CSS Library That Brings the Beauty of Terminal UIs to the Browser

(webtui.ironclad.sh)
320 points IroncladDev | 1 comments | 12 Apr 25 22:02 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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rollcat ◴[13 Apr 25 06:39 UTC] No.43670593[source]▶
I don't understand the obsession with 1980s terminals. They're even less powerful than the contemporary 8-bit home computers. It's perfectly OK to be a retro enthusiast, it's another thing to claim that this is the peak tech to power our modern CLIs, or a solid foundation for portable UIs.

From the docs:

    Stop thinking in standard CSS units like px, em, rem, %
    Start thinking in Character Cells for spacing, sizing, and positioning
A VT102 already has a character grid, but it needs a serial protocol to allow applications on the mainframe to talk to it. You can loop around this and use the raw mode to address individual cells.

The web browser has an insanely powerful typographic and layout engine. Now we're looping back into character cells. Something went wrong here, at least once.

That said, I like the aesthetic and the default color palette. It's quirky, but it has its places.

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pdntspa ◴[13 Apr 25 07:02 UTC] No.43670690[source]▶
And can we stop calling every stupid little hobby project "beautiful" while we're at it? The word has no meaning any more.
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1. nkrisc ◴[13 Apr 25 13:21 UTC] No.43672631[source]▶
What's interesting is nearly all words in language are on an irreversible trajectory towards abstract meaninglessness. Take your own use of the word "project" for example. Long ago, it meant "to throw or thrust" an object. Of course, today its meaning has expanded so far beyond that original meaning. That is what is happening to the word "beautiful", but the only difference is that it's happening during your lifetime, instead of long before it. You probably didn't even think about your "misuse" of the word "project" because the truth is it no longer means what it used to mean.

Perhaps 500 years from now "beautiful" (or whatever it has morphed into) will simply have a meaning similar to "pleasant".