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[#83] Just Some TUI Thoughts

Some Thoughts on the Lagrange #TUI in #Linux

I not only love the Lagrange TUI, I'm /moved/ by it. I feel as though I've arrived in Geminispace for the first time. Your talent amazes me, and you have raised the bar incredibly for anyone following in your footsteps. I find it hard to think of a TUI experience that is this streamlined and effective. While using it I often forget I am in the terminal. It is quite the accomplishment. In addition to this, you have clearly put a lot of thought and effort into the TUI experience. It is not just a half-baked translation of a GUI application. The TUI makes sense on its own.

Because of these virtues, it has become my Gemini browser of choice, and I doubt anything will replace it. I only wish I knew C++, or that it was extensible somehow in my preferred language. It seems to me that such a solid foundation could serve more distant purposes.

A few preliminary observations.

It would be nice to have a hotkey to get a list of hotkeys. `?` is currently being used to open the drop down menus. Couldn't it be `/`, with `?` serving help?
`^[TAB]` doesn't switch between split screens as advertised, but thankfully tabbing ~10 times does get the job done.
I don't see any way to set the homepage, and I don't see any homepage hotkey. When I open a new tab, bbs.geminispace.org opens up, instead of my preferred homepage, a gemtext in my homefolder. Lagrange was doing that, as well, but the ambiguous behavior has carried over here.
I wish `[ESC]` would make floating menus disappear immediately. I sometimes get stuck waiting for the drop down menus to disappear.
There seems to be unpredictable undocumented hotkey functionality. Once I had the hotkey menu item open (File>Preferences). After it closed, I pressed `<` and it opened again, and closed with the same keypress. Very convenient I thought. But later when I pressed `<` nothing happened, even after I navigated other menus. I'm not sure what is going on.
While the color choices are better than average, I would prefer to set my own color scheme. I'm not at all of the opinion that programmers generally have special insight into aesthetics, present company excepted. It would be far better to establish a styling standard which all Gemini browsers could use to color output. This would enable people with strong aesthetic sensibilities to make their mark on Geminispace as well. Artists could release styling packs. It would also enable gemini sites to make their own styles, which browsers could optionally download and use to present the page in a manner more suited to their tastes. Heresy, I know, but I think /an inevitability/. Beautiful text matters, and beauty cannot be locked up in a menu with only a handful of choices, no matter how good those choices may be.
It would be convenient to be able to cycle through levels of contrast to facilitate different moments of interaction with text. For example, when dealing with an option-heavy interface, like BBS, high contrast is preferred. But for reading long texts, a lower contrast would be preferred. I like that users can pick saturation levels. But why not make this option available via a hotkey?
As I mentioned before, it would be convenient to have a hotkey that doubled the line spacing of paragraphs (presently 0, to 1 empty line between text lines, or "double spacing"). I believe this is a serious matter. Proportional worlders enjoy dynamic line spacing that makes large blocks of text easy on the eyes. Books, for example, never feature paragraphs that are tightly spaced. The terminal, by contrast, has only two options: text standing on the head of the next line of text, or double spacing that feels a bit too wide. Double spacing is the obvious choice for reading paragraphs in the terminal. Unfortunately, it also makes a hash out of other textual elements, like lists or blocks interactive options as we find on BBS. The best option would double space paragraphs only, leaving everything else single-spaced. A second best option is a hotkey to switch between single and double spacing. A not very useful option at all is a permanent setting hidden behind a bunch of menus.

Those are just some thoughts. Hats off to you.

✔︎

🐞 Issue #83 in s/Lagrange-Issues

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10 hours ago

1 Comment

🕹️ skyjake [mod...] · 40 minutes ago:

The keyboard shortcuts certainly still need refinement. I've adjusted a few of them to be suitable for the terminal, but not all. When it comes to listing the hotkeys, you can generally see the bindings listed in context menus plus there's the list in Preferences > Keys. Note that for help there's the F1 binding already.
The homepage is configured via a bookmark tag. You must have the tag set on bbs.geminispace.org; check you bookmarks.
The delay after ESC seems terminal emulator dependent. I recommend ^G to get an immediate effect.
Preferences has a binding for the comma key; maybe that's what you are activating there?
Customizing color theming is a larger feature that I'm planning to work on in the future (not TUI-specific).
Contrast/saturation keybindings could indeed be useful, much like the zoom keys. Same for the line spacing, I suppose.