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THE TIMELESSNESS OF TUIS - March 16, 2025
The lowest common denominator of all UIs is text. In a
way, TUIs (text user interfaces) are the only truly
cross-platform UI. They can be rendered anywhere, including
*inside* of other interfaces. They're nearly guaranteed to
work on any hardware we invent in the future.
Compared to GUIs, however, TUIs are much lower resolution.
You are limited to monospaced unicode characters. This feels
like a negative, but it isn't. TUIs force you to distill
your interface down to its most basic elements. Anything
nonessential must go.
TUIs are inoculated from the excesses of modern software
design. You don't get to have drop shadows, transparency, or
scrolljacking. You get a limited palette of characters and
colors, leaving the raw design of your interface to stand or
fall on its own.
Limitations are a powerful catalyst for creativity.
Curious people see limitations as an invitation to overcome
them. Give a curious child a TI-83 and he will give you
Space Invaders. Give him Minecraft and he will give you
Roman aqueducts.
Orson Welles put it succinctly: "The enemy of art is the
absence of limitations." There is no better way to snuff
creativity out of a man than to give him endless resources
and no deadline. Often, your best work comes when you have
the strictest constraints...like having 1980s computer
hardware that could display a whopping 16 different colors:
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→SAUCE00Red Dragon Zeus II Mistigris
20210208╤‼ ☺☺P ↓ ☻IBM VGA
I'm making
xit, a version control system with a built-in
TUI. It's still in its infancy but lately I've been working
on the status view. If I were doing this in a GUI, I'd have
spent a long time trying to decide how it should look, what
controls to use, and so on. With a TUI, the decision
paralysis goes away and you just do the dumb, simple thing:
╔══════╗
log ║status║
╚══════╝
┌─────────┐
│added (1)│ not added (0) not tracked (0)
└─────────┘
┌─────┐ ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
± │f.txt│ │ │
└─────┘ │ diff --git a/f.txt b/f.txt │
│ index 98d5083..ae42890 100644 │
│ --- a/f.txt │
│ +++ b/f.txt │
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ @@ -1,3 +1,3 @@ │
│ a │
│ - x │
│ + y │
│ c │
│ │
│ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
If there's a merge conflict, it looks like this:
╔══════╗
log ║status║
╚══════╝
┌─────────────┐
added (0) │not added (1)│ not tracked (0)
└─────────────┘
┌─────┐ ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
≠ │f.txt│ │ │
└─────┘ │ diff --git a/f.txt b/f.txt │
│ index 98d5083..c3736c3 100644 │
│ --- a/f.txt │
│ +++ b/f.txt │
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ @@ -1,3 +1,9 @@ │
│ a │
│ + ⟨⟨⟨⟨⟨⟨⟨ target (master) │
│ x │
│ + ||||||| base (31791fdb2aea4e32bde323475a03cfec7ad51bf4) │
│ + b │
│ + ======= │
│ + y │
│ + ⟩⟩⟩⟩⟩⟩⟩ source (foo) │
│ c │
│ │
│ │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
With TUIs, you have permission to just do the plain,
boring thing, which is likely the thing that will keep
working well many years from now when UI design trends
change.
Since TUIs are just text, you can embed them direcly in
your unit tests like
this! Your entire UI can be tested
from within the rest of your tests. The tests also become
very easy to skim for the reader because they provide such
an immediate, visual representation of what state you're in.
For developer tools, TUIs are a no-brainer. It blows my
mind that tools are still shipping with an entire web
browser inside them just to render an interface for people
who are already very comfortable with the terminal. With a
TUI, I can use your tool over SSH, and I have total control
over the colors and fonts it uses to render.
TUIs are not a relic of the past. Every GUI framework you
are using today will eventually become obsolete, while the
simplicity and timelessness of TUIs will remain. GUIs get
remembered, but
TUIs never die.