<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: antisol</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=antisol</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 17:52:49 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=antisol" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "DOS Zone"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, when I first opened the page, there were 0 DOS games visible.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 05:40:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48218333</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48218333</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48218333</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "YouTube, your RSS feeds are broken"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well hi there chatgpt! I wonder if the person who couldn't be bothered writing this article actually had a point they wanted to make? I don't know because I stopped reading as soon as I recognised your fingerprint.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2026 10:05:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48034420</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48034420</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48034420</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "What did you love about VB6?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I second GP's sentiment. That debugger was <i>amazing</i>. I've never seen anything that can touch it to this day.<p>Tell you more: you could also just run code to do things like change variables in the immediate window while execution was paused, so e.g that example where you want to re-run some loop: first you drag the PC arrow back to above the loop as GP already described, then in the immediate window you can just run things like e.g:<p><pre><code>  someVariable="initial value"
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To reset vars back to their initial values, or clean out buggy data, or whatever.<p>then you can just step through the code or resume execution.<p>I used to use it a LOT for handling edge cases on long-running, one-off things: run the code until it hits an error, fix the error by doing some stuff in the immediate window, resume the loop without re-processing the 100K items you've already processed.<p>The destruction of VB with no upgrade path (the advice was to "just" rewrite your perfectly-functional 100KLOC codebase) is what pushed me away from MS, first to delphi and then to FOSS. But that VB6 debugger was IMO probably the best thing MS has ever done.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2026 15:49:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47987429</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47987429</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47987429</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "Tracking when Trump chickens out"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You don't know that.<p>I wish I was kidding.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:08:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47845502</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47845502</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47845502</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "Tracking when Trump chickens out"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes, yes, this is all very clever and funny and whatnot. I chuckled. Well done you.<p>...But has it occurred to you that by putting this online and publicising it, you're effectively daring this lunatic with nuclear codes to actually go through with his threats? I for one am relieved every time he "chickens out".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Apr 2026 11:56:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47833015</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47833015</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47833015</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's very, very cool. I especially like selecting files with wildcards. And also the amiga-like view with different sized icons <3</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:02:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47814099</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47814099</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47814099</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><i>(2/2)</i><p><pre><code>  > Even with 8 GB, the difference between tycat (assuming it needs no memory at all) and VLC is then about 1% of the machine's capacity.
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Maybe you don't tend to use all your machine's resources, but the way I use my machine, it's constantly at near or over 100% capacity. I'm <i>constantly</i> fighting against swap, no matter how much ram I have. Right now my machine is using about 113% of available ram. I'll have to flush it out and clean it up soon to prevent too much swapping. I probably wouldn't want to start vlc right now without closing something else first - if I wanted to watch a video right now I'd use something more lightweight (or something I already have loaded, like my terminal). This is a normal state of affairs for me.<p><pre><code>  > A useful baseline seems to be the actual Linux terminal. It can do 16 colors. Unfortunately, it doesn't even support emojis, though.
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In what way is this "a useful baseline"? Useful for what? Why is the extremely-well-supported 256 colour set or RGB not more useful? Who uses linux in text-only mode or with a display that can't do rgb in 2026 in any situation that isn't headless or exotic? Why can't they just run more complex stuff on the framebuffer with rgb colour if they want it? Why, given the above, is emoji support in text-only mode important? to whom? For what?<p><pre><code>  > I ask myself since years: Does this terminal still switch to an actual text mode, or does the text get rendered in a framebuffer by the OS.
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Why would anybody who isn't working with extremely exotic legacy hardware care about this in 2026?<p><pre><code>  > And even more so all the applications that I know that I could run inside it.
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Which ones don't run in terminology?<p><pre><code>  > Again, I'm always open for something exciting.
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...as long as it's not the heresy of displaying graphics in a a teminal.<p><pre><code>  > for all the comfort I get back,
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See this is the point right here. You consider it comfort. I consider it nuisance. So go use your GUI applications and enjoy them and let others enjoy their preference. <i>Like I said a hundred thousand years ago</i>.<p><pre><code>  > But yeah, my basic point was not actually to evangelize for Dolphin or VLC or any particular app.
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No, it was to say - without having even bothered to try it yourself - that there's no use for a thing that I use <i>all the time</i>. And then in order to support your thesis you started evangelising the massive pile of software that you'd use to achieve what I can do better with one program that I always have running.<p><pre><code>  > Well, how do "the kids" get their Git icons etc? As far as I can remember, they call it "Nerd Fonts".
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How are nerd fonts at all relevant to any part of the discussion?<p>Oh, I see: You said "[dolphin] even can render actual icons without a patched terminal font!"...<p>...you mean like terminology and other graphics-supporting terminals can? If they were using terminology or kitty, they wouldn't need to patch the nerd font icons into their terminal font - they could just display the icon they want.<p>So your point was to sarcastically suggest another actually-pretty-good use-case for the functionality you're arguing against. Got it.<p><pre><code>  > But all I've tried are buggy sometimes in what glyph widths they report
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And what happened when you filed bug reports about this? Please link to them, I'll be interested to read your reports for more detail than none at all.<p><pre><code>  > If terminology does better in that regard, good news! Nice!
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Well I don't know whether it does or not. Because you haven't bothered to actually describe the issue you claim exists in any detail. Or done anything more than make a vague and as-far-as-i-can-tell-incorrect assertion that terminals can't display emojis properly. As if that was somehow relevant to whether they should be able to display graphics or not.<p><pre><code>  > As an application developer, I still cannot assume that my users all have terminology, so it's still no solution
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As an application developer, you have control over this thing called "system requirements" for your software. And you can do things like adding "requires terminology" or "feature X requires terminology" in there. Or you could put a note on the relevant issue in your issue tracker saying "you can work around this by using terminology, which doesn't have this issue". But of course we'd need to know whether that's true, first, and for that we'd need more than zero detail.<p>Or perhaps you should just make your application graphical, since you've said solves the problem you're having with emojis and repeatedly asserted that graphical software is inherently better.<p>Which of these is appropriate, i don't know, because you'd have to give more than zero detail for me to be able to tell.<p>Maybe when you're linking to more than zero detail you can also explain how it has anything to do with whether supporting graphics in terminals is a good idea.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 18 Apr 2026 01:05:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47812298</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47812298</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47812298</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><i>(1/2)</i><p><pre><code>  > it would be odd to just support a handful of formats. Any format should be supported, then. Furthermore, it shouldn't be just a static preview. I also want to navigate around there a bit then. [...] Hell, I basically want to just have Blender there.
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I'm sure the enlightenment folks will be happy to look at your patches for these features you want. I'm not sure how you plan to integrate blender, but you've been programming professionally since 20 years, so I'm sure you have a plan and understand in ways that I simply can't comprehend.<p>Raster already pointed out, and you ignored, that actually it does support pdfs, and libreoffice already. Seems it just never occurred to me to try them. So you actually won't need to patch that in at all!<p><pre><code>  > We all know this is oversimplified in so many ways... ;)
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Do we? I don't. Maybe you can point me to the relevant lines of source code, where it's more than 3 lines. I'll look forward to seeing your link.<p><pre><code>  > This was just about adding the video support (which was already implemented and just needed to be called), not for the graphics support in general, right? 
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No, it does both graphics and video with the same 3 lines of code. As has already been explained and you ignored and/or failed to understand.<p><pre><code>  > Also, the code isn't even my primary concern at all. Some "improvements" would be just a single line of code, and you'd definitely hate them.
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So, to summarise: you bring up an argument that it shouldn't be done due to code complexity, then when that is rebuked because the additional code complexity is very close to zero, just say "the code isn't even my primary concern at all", without elaborating any further to outline what your concern actually is. And to summarise the summary: you don't actually have any reasoning, you just don't like it because you don't like it.<p><pre><code>  > But just the repetition doesn't make it sound more reasonable to me tbh
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Then why do you seem to think that saying "herp derp, I don't understand therefore it's a cult" over and over is going to sound more reasonable to me at some point?<p><pre><code>  > That might very much be my fault! 
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Yep<p><pre><code>  > Unfortunately, you didn't help me in that regard either so far.
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Maybe it'd help if you pulled your head out of your ass and actually read what I wrote.<p><pre><code>  > Well, if you have a superior approach, which is quicker and more seamless, I'd definitely want us to see it using for everything!
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We're talking about <i>previewing</i>. I have a superior approach <i>for previewing</i>. Which leads me to re-state my previous question: Did I say "editing the thing" or "working with the thing"?<p><pre><code>  > It's probably just another three lines of code to make the mouse position available in pixel granularity. And then we can basically start porting everything into that new paradigm. Why should we then stick with the inferior one?
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I suspect it'll be much more complex than that, but you're a professional programmer since 20 years who has never looked at the code or even run the software, so you probably know better than I do.<p>I'm sure the e folks will be happy to look at the patches you provide for this functionality you want.<p>I suspect there might be a bit of discussion about things like "is this desirable" and "does this break compatibility with existing things" because this is a bizarro thing that you've invented out of nowhere based on nothing anybody said anywhere ever. But I'm sure they'll be happy to discuss it once you submit a patch.<p><pre><code>  > I had hoped that, once someone starts to develop such a "new class of [...] applications", we could have a more modern foundation for it than ttys.
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I look forward to seeing your patch that does this without breaking compatibility with ~50 years of legacy software.<p><pre><code>  > three or four file formats (or whatever EFL supports)
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Again, EFL supports a lot of formats. Including ones I didn't even know about, like the pdf and libreoffice docs you wanted. I guess you didn't bother reading that before.<p><pre><code>  > Technically, the application that runs your terminal _is_ a GUI application. I'm not aware of any terminal-based X11 emulators. That's just what I meant. Not more, not less.
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So what's your point? How is it relevant that my terminal emulator runs on X? I'm not talking about the environment that runs my terminal, I'm talking about things that run <i>in</i> my terminal.<p>As for "terminal-based X11 emulators:, there's a fairly prominent one you might have heard of, it's called xorg. If you try to run 'startx' inside an X session you'll have problems.<p><pre><code>  > Ahh, you're also one of the authors of some parts of that software stack?
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When did I say that?<p><pre><code>  > Either way, no I don't expect anything
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You demanded that support for terminology's graphics sequences needed to be patched into every terminal emulator that exists in order for you to consider it valid for some reason.<p>By doing so, you're saying that people who write software that supports these graphical protocols (or maybe the authors of the terminals? It's unclear who you expected to do this for you) should jump through huge, unnecessary hoops just so that you can run their software (that you claim you don't want to run), rather than you..........simply running their software in the environment it requires.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 18 Apr 2026 01:04:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47812296</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47812296</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47812296</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'll skip all the parts where you don't understand my point, or where you're just saying nonsense, and jump right to the heart of the thing (other than "you don't get it"):<p><pre><code>  > I mean "instantly" in a practical meaning. You don't have to explain me once more that it can't be exactly 0 sec in a scientific meaning
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So, in other words, when you say "instantly", you mean "not instantly".<p>That's a pretty great metaphor for your entire line of argumentation.<p>I would respond to the rest - there's a million things there that I'd love to dissect, e.g the admission that you haven't even tried the thing you're so against - but why would I bother? When you say things, you mean things that aren't the thing you said. Case closed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 17 Apr 2026 22:52:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47811430</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47811430</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47811430</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "FIM – Linux framebuffer image viewer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Oh nice! How did I not know it works with caca?!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:39:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804819</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804819</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804819</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "FIM – Linux framebuffer image viewer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>another fun one if you're in an exotic situation and don't have a framebuffer (or if you just want to have some fun by making your games to look worse):<p>export SDL_VIDEODRIVER=aalib<p>unfortunately it's only SDL1, though</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:32:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804075</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804075</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804075</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "FIM – Linux framebuffer image viewer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>yep! and ffplay will detect your situation and run on the framebuffer if that seems appropriate. I'm sure there's arguments to explicitly tell it to do that, but I've never used them :)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:25:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804028</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804028</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804028</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "FIM – Linux framebuffer image viewer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is exactly right - you can get a framebuffer on just about anything, including pretty much any video card made since about 1990, and also more fun things like the little i2c display that your toaster has. No need to restrict relatively simple software like fbi/fim to running on less hardware by using drm.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:31:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47803733</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47803733</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47803733</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Please link me to the python3 gtk2 library so that I can migrate all my python2 gtk2 software to python3 without rewriting the entire UI. Thanks in advance!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:28:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47794690</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47794690</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47794690</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><p><pre><code>  > my new rewrite of efm (e's built-in filemanagger) also has a terminal-like worklflow. i can literally in the efm window type "ls ./dir" and it will liteally change to that dir and list/show it. same with "cd .." or "rm a.jpg b.txt *.png" and it will delete those files. you can even just run apps like "gimp file.png" .... and it knows gimp is a command and there is a desktop file for it and will let you know by putting an icon next to it.. and it'll just run the command with those arguments
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Oh, damn, that sounds cool. I might have to give that a try.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 11:38:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791610</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791610</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791610</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><i>(2/2)</i><p><pre><code>  > it's there while I'm releasing the Enter key
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This is empirically, demonstrably untrue, because the "launch application" action does not begin until the "key release" event has fired. Which is something you'd know if you understood how your interface works.<p><pre><code>  > And before you start taking into account that a lot of gui software is just poorly written trash seemingly written by morons under the CADT model (Hi, gnome!).
  
  We can definitely agree here!!! :)
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*cough* <i>Whoosh!</i><p><pre><code>  > Better than reinventing a whole new kind of terminal applications which aren't actual terminal applications, 
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OMG you're totally right! Let's just stay using 1970s tech and never improve anything! Just remember to never ever update your browser!<p>Why are they not actual terminal applications? What terminal functionality do they lack? Please provide excruciating technical detail on this subject about which you know nothing.<p><pre><code>  > but only work in an environment emulated by the very thing they want to replace.
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I know right! It's so rare and exotic for people in 2026 to have hardware capable of graphics! And <i>in colour</i>, too! Such an onerous requirement! And also it's obviously totally impossible to ever detect whether a program is running in an environment where graphics are supported and fall back to a text-only mode! Oh noes! What will we do when they force graphical output into the kernel with no option to disable it?!?!<p>For the umpteenth time, who said anything about replacing guis? I have <i>repeatedly</i> stated that they have their uses and are the best option for a bunch of things.<p><pre><code>  > The same morons will come and screw up with all kinds of things there again, once that'd get more momentum. But now, since they also have to maintain EFL plugins or other graphical-to-terminal translations for their apps and file formats, they will even screw up heavier.
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Why are these people writing gui programs that run in a terminal in your contrived fantasy scenario? Again, for the 50th time, <i>who suggested this or advocated for it? When?</i><p>EFL plugins? Graphical to terminal translations? What are you talking about? It's almost like you don't understand the technology and have invented some fantasy architecture for all this stuff which is nothing like the actual architecture that exists and has been described here and elsewhere.<p><pre><code>  > On an average day, I open a Dolphin window maybe once or twice... Often not even once (e.g. I just open my IDE and stay there, or the browser, or a game, you name it). You don't need a new one for every operation! 
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Right, but we're not talking about an average day. We're talking about a specific scenario where you have described a specific workflow which you are claiming is somehow superior to the one which I have outlined, and which is demonstrably superior by several metrics which I and others care about. I don't actually give a fuck what you do on an average day, or how often you start dolphin. You're the one who claimed that you would start dolphin, and then another program like vlc, to do what I can do without starting anything. If you're now claiming that you don't actually need to start dolphin, then why did you waste my time by advocating that workflow?<p><pre><code>  > if your workflow is seriously superior, then be happy that EFL and all that exists and supports all the file formats that you want to preview, and be happy that it provides all the features you need. I'm happy with you then. I have the feeling that it's a very special workflow for a very special task at best, though.
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Your "feeling" about my workflow is worth less than nothing. Because, yet again, you don't know what my workflow is. Because you don't understand it. Because you haven't bothered to try to understand it. And that's fine for you, if you prefer your worse windows-like UI then go and enjoy writing trash in visual studio. I'm happy for you. But don't think that that means you're somehow qualified to talk about terminals and their pros and cons.<p><pre><code>  > And you type "xdg-open" while I can just press Enter (or double-click ^^)
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Well, it's actually only 'xo' for me, I set up an alias a long time ago. I said "xdg-open" because not everybody has that alias.<p><pre><code>  > Why should I constantly want previews of something, so often that I'd care about a second of waiting time once in preparation,
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As I've said elsewhere, you don't understand the point and you're fixated on the speed thing. Because you don't understand the point.<p><pre><code>  > Couldn't you just leave it open then?! Yeah, you'll definitely have some reasons...
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I have a bunch of reasons.<p>Have <i>you</i> ever left dolphin open for 160+ hours in a directory containing 80,000 mp3s? How'd that work out for you? How did it handle it? How much ram did it use? What was your system load like?<p><pre><code>  > Sure you do! I know! Terminology is one of them. That's exactly the point.
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...that you don't understand my point and the problems I have with the flow you suggest?<p><pre><code>  > For an actual (virtual)terminal, it would at least remotely make some sense to me. Because there it's not an option to just use a common X11/Wayland image viewer.
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Again, do you mean "running outside of a graphical environment"? That oh-so-common situation that so many of us deal with on a daily basis in 2026?<p>Let's say you do mean that: You <i>still</i> have no clue what you're talking about. For instance it's trivially easy to view an image or play a video with no graphical environment running*, as long as you have hardware that can do a framebuffer. Like, for example, every graphics card made in the last 30+ years. And if you have that hardware, then you can run terminology on it, too. As raster already mentioned and you failed to understand.<p>* <i>(one of my machines is indeed set up to play video 24x7 and does not run a windowing system or graphical environment at all)</i><p><pre><code>  > It's trying to make terminal apps graphical, right? 
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Terminology doesn't give a shit what software you run on it. It's non-sentient, you see. It doesn't care either way. It's <i>definitely</i> not trying to convert terminal programs into gui programs, or the other way around, like you seem to think because you haven't bothered to understand what I'm talking about.<p>If you think it might be, you might want to look into that. Ascribing motivations to inanimate objects seems like it might not be healthy.<p><pre><code>  > And all that technical complexity is just there
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All <i>what</i> technical complexity? Where is the complexity, exactly? Please be precise and detailed.<p>You don't know. Because you don't understand how it works, and you've ignored the people who tried to tell you.<p><pre><code>  > because you don't have to move your eyes to another window 
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You. Do. Not. Understand. My. Point.<p>Please try re-reading my other responses and this time try to comprehend what I'm saying if you'd like to continue this discussion.<p><pre><code>  > there are very basic image viewers without any features
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...No features at all, huh? Please provide examples.<p>So then, you're saying they don't open up a window? They don't decode jpeg?<p>I question the usefulness of this software. But I can't wait to see your list.<p><pre><code>  > I've no idea why they should be slower than the EFL previewers
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Then I'd suggest you re-read and this time try to comprehend my detailed explanation in a previous message explaining how they are and always will be fundamentally slower and cannot help but to be so due to how software and physics work.<p><pre><code>  >  I'd definitely dislike to see all that arriving in major desktop environments. And I'm still optimistic in that regard
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Oh noes! It's already been in KDE and konsole for more than 5 years! I'm so so so so so so so so so so <i>so</i> sad for you! How this must ruin your day and impact very negatively on everything you do in daily life! And the bugs! All those bugs that the shoddy implementation and extreme technical complexity have caused for you! Do you need a hug?<p><pre><code>  > If it does, at least there might be ways to integrate the Dolphin thumbnailers. :)
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<i>What. the fuck. are you talking about???</i><p>Are you saying that you wish lsix[6] existed? And that it worked in konsole? And that you wish you could use it right now with literally 3 seconds of effort to install it? Are you saying that, after typing a hundred thousand words railing against the inclusion of <i>any</i> graphical features in <i>any</i> terminal ever?<p><pre><code>  > In some way that's exactly what I'm wondering about when people have terminal-centric workflows in an environment that could actually just do graphics.
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Some people value being able to get stuff efficiently. Apparently, you're not one of them.<p>I love how, after having the massive complexity of gui applications explained to you, you just brush that off and say "just do graphics". That's pretty good trolling right there.<p><pre><code>  > In particular when they then start to patch graphics support inside their terminals
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For what I really really really really hope is the final time: if you bothered to try to understand the point which I have made to you repeatedly and in several different ways, then you might understand. But that would require more than zero effort on your part, so it's not going to happen.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel</a><p>[2] <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=391781" rel="nofollow">https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=391781</a><p>[3] <a href="https://github.com/hpjansson/chafa/issues/78" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/hpjansson/chafa/issues/78</a><p>[4] <a href="https://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.log.html#xterm_359" rel="nofollow">https://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.log.html#xterm_359</a><p>[5] <a href="https://man.archlinux.org/man/extra/xscreensaver/phosphor.6.en" rel="nofollow">https://man.archlinux.org/man/extra/xscreensaver/phosphor.6....</a><p>[6] <a href="https://github.com/hackerb9/lsix" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/hackerb9/lsix</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 11:16:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791430</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791430</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791430</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><i>(lol, split for length, 1/2)</i><p><pre><code>  > But how often do I spontaneously need previews of something?
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I don't know. Or care. I use it a bunch. Maybe you're conditioned not to do that because every time you do it, it takes you 10+ seconds rather then 1. Who knows? Who cares?<p><pre><code>  > can it show me the TOC of some pdf and allows me to navigate to some chapter?
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I've already responded to this spurious scenario. Go read my previous responses.<p><pre><code>  > Well, there seem to be some use cases... Obviously... 
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Ooh, what a great concession.<p><pre><code>  > I still cannot imagine how they look like, though.
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Could that be because you haven't tried it and don't understand what you're talking about?<p><pre><code>  > The performance was always good enough to be much faster than I am.
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So in other words, you are slow.<p><pre><code>  > Before we now start to shoehorn graphical functionality into terminals, which we then only can use in graphical environments anyways, 
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Who shoehorned what? Where? You haven't read the specs for how it works, so you don't know what you're talking about. Still.<p><pre><code>  > shouldn't we better just improve the graphical apps? 
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So your suggestion is to add a terminal to every gui program in existence? I could point out how that's objectively worse in about a thousand ways, but instead I think I'll just let the absurdity of your entire premise sit.<p><pre><code>  > There is no inherent reason for them to be any worse than your terminal apps (that are eventually hosted by just an ordinary graphical app).
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I've already explained, in great detail, that there is indeed an inherent reason why they're worse than terminal applications. Maybe you should consider reading the thing you're responding to.<p><pre><code>  > About your list what Dolphin needs to do but terminal apps don't: Yes, sure. A lot is going on. In the background. I don't have to wait for it to generate thumbnails. 
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You do if you want to see them<p><pre><code>  > It's not bash, which completely freezes then, e.g. when the network drive has a slow day, and I blatantly pressed Tab.
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Dolphin does exactly nothing for exactly the same length of time (actually longer, due to all the extra shit it does) in this scenario.<p><pre><code>  > At least around 3000 files
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So a tiny, trivial list of binaries then. That's about 40% the size of the directory where my binaries live.<p><pre><code>  > I would avoid having so many files in a single directory. 
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So in other words, dolphin, like every other graphical file manager, is slow as fuck working with directories with lots of files (where "lots" is a colloquial term for "really not very many at all"), and you adjust your workflow to compensate for how dog-slow your shitty gui file manager is.<p>My music directory contains over 80,000 files. Try opening that in dolphin, you'll learn the meaning of "slow".<p>> I instantly see it listing the files, and it felt finished instantly, and i was able to scroll around. No waiting time that would have blocked me.<p>No, you don't "instantly" see it listing files, because it has to open a window first, which you've already said takes ~800ms. You're just not aware of the wait time because you've conditioned yourself to accept constant context switches and thumb-twiddling in your slow DE.<p>But just as an experiment, why don't you "instantly" select the file named zcat.<p><pre><code>  > BTW: All the thumbnail stuff is done on demand, as soon as you scroll down.
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So in other words: "in advance", while you wait, before you can see them.<p><pre><code>  > And finally: You can just turn it off! ;)
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Dolphin has the ability to disable it's "double click to open file in the preferred editor" functionality, to avoid the need to determine mimetypes, does it?<p><pre><code>  > Counting the files, and determining which application is associated with a file type, are quite cheap operations
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Hahahahahaha. <i>Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!</i><p>Someone has never looked at a directory with subdirectories containing 100K files or more in a graphical file manager.<p>Someone has never looked at his disk usage while that happens.<p><pre><code>  > But that's not because a terminal is the superior environment (how could it be if you just emulate it with the "bad" one). 
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Actually that's exactly why - terminals <i>are</i> the superior environment.<p>"emulate it with the 'bad' one?" What are you talking about? Who said guis were bad? When?<p><pre><code>  > If all that 'modern' (win98) Dolphin magic is too slow, there are probably more lightweight alternatives that are still graphical.
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Such as?<p>I look forward to seeing your list of graphical file managers that are faster (or even within an order of magnitude as fast as) ls. Please be exhaustive, I want to try them all!<p><pre><code>  > I still don't see the point in patching graphical features into something text-based, which you then need to run in an actual graphical environment
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No, you don't see the point. We've already established this.<p>...Is your complaint here that you can't run these graphical terminal programs without having some sort of graphical environment running? i.e that it won't run on an actual text-only dumb terminal?<p>When was the last time you used a terminal in an environment where you didn't have hardware for graphics support?<p>And let's say you're one of the seven people on earth who does use a text-only dumb terminal daily: When did anybody advocate phasing out CLI software that doesn't use graphics features? How do you know that a bunch of this software with graphics support can't fall back to non-graphical options in non-graphical terminals? (hint: many/most can)<p>By the way, a bunch of actual "text-only" dumb terminals have had graphics support since the 1980s [1], and konsole has supported graphics for at least 5 years [2], and since 2022 it has supported the kitty graphics protocol [3]. Of course I'm sure you knew none of this because it took me >0 seconds of searching to look up the konsole support. I'm also sure this means konsole is broken and doesn't work, and the graphics support that's been there without your knowledge for half a decade has probably caused a bunch of bugs that you've been having trouble with, so I guess you should probably change terminals. Maybe to xterm... oh wait that's had sixel support for 6 years [4].<p>Here you go: phosphor [5]. I'm 90% sure this doesn't support graphics. And As a bonus, you'll be thrilled to know that it also doesn't support colour!<p><pre><code>  > let's today start porting all our graphical apps into that E terminal thing
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I don't understand where you've gotten this idiotic idea that nobody advocated and which I have repeatedly stated that nobody advocated from. Constructed strawman, much?<p><pre><code>  > A terminal application that you run in an emulator, which is just some graphical application, cannot fundamentally be faster than just directly running graphical applications without that indirection, right? That would make no sense at all...
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I've already explained how it is indeed far far more efficient and faster. If you think it doesn't make sense, that's because you don't understand. I'd suggest doing some reading. For example of my previous explanation.<p><pre><code>  > I played more with command.com than with the actual games installed, I suspect... My friends played NES, while I tried to hack custom program launchers as .bat files
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Ooh I'm <i>so</i> impressed! By that time, I was already editing command.com itself.<p>editing .bat files, huh? And then you thought windows 3 was good and never went back to a terminal.<p>So, another way to say it would be that you don't know how to use a modern unix terminal - which is what I mean when I say "terminal", because dos was always a toy OS.<p><pre><code>  > Even they made use of the 16 colors (or 8?!)
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...and you don't even know what your DOS machine was capable of or what it could and couldn't do. This depended on a few factors, not least what type of graphics card (if any) you had and whether you were using a colour screen or an amber/green one.<p><pre><code>  > Sure, command.com was probably quicker than Windows File Manager, strictly speaking
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So, in other words: text-based software is faster than graphical software.<p><pre><code>  > But all that happens so quickly nowadays, in terms of wall clock time, that I really doubt the practical relevance. 
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...because you've conditioned yourself not to notice the time you spend waiting around for your shit software to initialise.<p><pre><code>  > A "hello world" app in either Qt or GTK starts instantly on my machine. No waiting time that a human being could recognize. I press Enter, and it's there while I'm releasing the Enter key.
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1. It absolutely does not start instantly. Go write a "hello world" in qt/gtk that exits instantly as soon as it's displayed its main window. Then time how long it takes. It's going to be >0. Or, in other words, "not instant"<p>2. This is a false and contrived example - a "hello world" program is intentionally extremely minimal and explicitly does not involve initialising a complex interface - it's literally a single control - how many "hello world" programs do you use on a daily basis for productivity? Please link me to a "hello world" program that can preview video for me, and that starts up instantly.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 11:14:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791421</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791421</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791421</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><p><pre><code>  > I don't expect anything from anybody
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Aah, I see. So then I guess that wasn't a demand that people who have their own perfectly functional terminals with graphics support that they've been using for years and are perfectly happy with patch graphics functionality into every other terminal in existence just in case you might happen to try to use a terminal program that requires graphics support. I guess I must have misunderstood. Silly me.<p><pre><code>  > can only comment things and add my 2 ct.
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Perhaps it would be wise to do some basic reading and perhaps even testing to understand some of the basics about how the technology works before making comments about them. This is an excellent method to not come across as totally uninformed and ignorant.<p><pre><code>  > All the terminal tech ecosystem is already somewhat beyond it's actual capabilities. You see that when you e.g. use tmux or screen
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???<p><pre><code>  > Or when you just have some emojis which are actually wider than the API tells you and your alignment goes off the rail
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????<p>My terminal displays emojis just fine and they align just fine as far as I know. Have you considered trying software that isn't shit? Or filing a bug report containing more than zero detail on the issue?<p><pre><code>  > Or that conceptual discrepancy between the 16 colors support, where users can typically decide freely how exactly each color should look like
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This is actually extremely straightforward if you spend 5 minutes understanding how it works, particularly with regards to backwards compatibility with terminals that don't support it. Which are few - it's incredibly well-supported in almost all terminals. I don't know what you're talking about...<p><pre><code>  >  (or sth like that?!)
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...<i>and neither do you</i>.<p>Damn, your nose is going to get right out of joint if you ever learn about RGB terminal colours. Shhh, nobody tell him!<p><pre><code>  > Everything is just a historically grown mess
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Indeed! Finally something we agree on!<p>And people working to improve terminals with efforts like terminology and kitty are trying to do what they can to address some of these issues without breaking anything. Which is <i>hard</i>. It's really quite an admirable effort worthy of respect.<p>But first you'd need to understand what they're doing.<p><pre><code>   > there are probably a lot of further problems that I've never even heard about.
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I have no doubt that there's <i>lots</i> that you haven't heard about<p><pre><code>  > when I hear about the idea of hacking full graphics support into that, as a professional software developer my first instinct is to understand whether that's really worth the trouble
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Ooh, appeal to authority. I'm so impressed.<p>Perhaps, as "a professional software developer", you should take the time to understand the tech that you're talking about. Doing so will help you form an informed opinion and will help you to avoid wasting everyone's time reading ignorant, uninformed, assumption-laden nonsense.<p><pre><code>  > And what the rationale behind is
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Excellent! So go back and try actually reading my previous posts. That'll help a lot with this.<p><pre><code>  > And whether it actually makes sense, from an architecture perspective
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Excellent! So go and read the docs and form an actual opinion that isn't "I don't like the sound of this herp derp". I'm sure once it's not immediately obvious that you have no clue what you're talking about and have spent zero seconds attempting to understand the architecture, people will be happy to discuss your pull requests making all the revolutionary improvements that I'm sure you'll make.<p><pre><code>  > And all the arguments that I've read here made no sense to me at all
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Then maybe you should try actually reading them<p><pre><code>  > It feels more like a cult when I talk to terminal-centric users.
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Aah! And the penny drops! You don't know how to use the terminal and don't understand its benefits. So of course you don't understand the arguments I've repeatedly outlined for why this functionality is desirable.<p><pre><code>  > As a Linux user since 20 years, my experience tells me that all these things always break something else
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Ooh, appeal to authority #2. I'm <i>so</i> impressed! Meanwhile I've been using linux since last century.<p>Enlighten me, then, o great software developer and 20-year Linux user: What does the graphics support in terminology / kitty break?<p>Maybe you should spend 5 minutes understanding how it works before you go making assumptions.<p><pre><code>  > people who say that basic image viewers start too slow for them
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You. Do. Not. Understand. My. Point. Because you don't understand how I operate. Because you don't know how to use a terminal.<p><pre><code>  > Either that's trivially fixable (and then we'd all be better off doing _that_ instead!),
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Please explain, in excruciating detail, exactly how you plan to "trivially" prevent the need to load in the qt library to get VLC to start and show its qt interface. I look forward to reading your technical paper.<p><pre><code>  > or just an illusion/cult, or the EFL previews will not be faster
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I already provided you with hard timing data demonstrating that previewing videos in terminology is more than 90% faster than the way you'd do it. If you have something other than completely uninformed assumptions based on nothing at all to back up your claim that previewing in terminology is not faster, please present your data here.<p>But as I've alluded to repeatedly and you've completely ignored, speed is actually not the primary issue. It's the context change. It's that "taking my hand off the keyboard" thing. Even more, it's the "staying in the same application" thing. And it's also more than all those factors. It's a similar phenomenon to how I can't really explain to you just exactly how pipes are amazing and one of the most incredibly powerful paradigms you could ever learn. I can't really explain it to you properly because IMO the only way that it will really click in your head is in the moment that you really actually understand pipes, and to do that you have to actually learn and work with pipes.<p>You're just fixated on the speed because you don't understand the cost of the context change because you don't understand how terminal people work, because you don't know how to use a terminal and think that switching contexts constantly and twiddling your thumbs while GUIs initialise is normal and fine. And that's fine, if you want to work like a windows user. You do you, and more power to you. Just stay the fuck away from making suggestions about how terminals should or shouldn't work.<p><pre><code>  > There is just no way they could be faster
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I have already explained in excruciating detail some of the major reasons why they are. If you still don't understand, I'd suggest reading my previous responses where I explain that. Or, you know, doing some further reading to understand the technology you're talking about.<p><pre><code>  > A basic graphical image viewer would do the same thing, just without all these indirection, translation to escape sequences, interpreting them again
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Maybe you should spend 5 minutes reading and understanding the technology you're commenting about, so that you don't make wildly incorrect assumptions, and don't come off as totally ignorant and uninformed.<p>Who translates what exactly into escape sequences that you think is more expensive than loading up the gtk/qt/wx widget libraries and instantiating a new window?<p><pre><code>  > Similar for the matters of proper keyboard support
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Without some detail of what you're talking about this is just a non sequitur. Terminology works fine with my keyboard, as has...let me think... every terminal I've used in the last 30+ years.<p>Since we're doing non sequiturs, allow me to retort: Avatar 3 was shit.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:33:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47790285</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47790285</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47790285</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><p><pre><code>  > Every format that someone now wants to handle on terminal, needs to be supported by the EFL library?! Does it support LO spreadsheets? PDFs?
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Why would you want to work with a spreadsheet in the terminal when there's a perfectly capable spreadsheet application right there?<p>But if you want to be able to <i>preview</i> libreoffice spreadsheets or PDFs in terminology - and also incidentally and for free every other EFL project which uses that control - I'm sure they'd be happy to look at your pull request.<p><pre><code>  > And now I want to switch away from LO to some very new office tools, and I cannot, because EFL doesn't support it yet?
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What?? so you open your preferred office tool. From terminology if you want to. I don't see why this is so difficult to understand? What about what I'm describing inhibits you from editing a spreadsheet in your spreadsheet editor?<p><pre><code>  > And all that just in order to show some previews in a terminal emulator instead of the graphical environment around it that is perfectly capable to do so since half a century? Where all the applications already exist?
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And all <i>what</i>? Raster already explained that it's like 3 lines of code.<p>The graphical environment might be able to do the same job, but as I've pointed out time and time again, it can't do it nearly as quickly or as fluidly when I'm already working in a terminal. We've been over this ad nauseum, but I'll just point out for the 30,000th time that all the ways you talk about involve opening up some other, slower program and switching away from the teminal. Which is a less seamless experience than just viewing the thing right there in the terminal. I don't know how I can state it any more clearly.<p>Did I say "editing the thing" or "working with the thing"? No, no I didn't say that. Because I didn't mean "Editing" or "working with".<p><pre><code>  > Fine. Just replace tycat with EFL in what I wrote before
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OK so just to clarify: your complaint is that in order to be able to view a file of a particular format, EFL needs to be able to... parse that file format? ...Like every piece of PC software ever made?<p><pre><code>  > But it's artificial. It solves a problem that just doesn't exist at all, and it doesn't actually improve anything, as long as it's not universally supported (at least in an actual Linux virtual terminal outside of X11/Wayland).
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You don't know what you're talking about. It does indeed solve a problem. It could allow an entirely new class of incredibly rich hybrid terminal/gui applications, for one thing. And I've already given examples of it tangibly improving things. Just because you don't understand doesn't make it useless.<p><pre><code>  > But why are you trying to improve the horse riding experience, if you actually have a car that is just artificially stripped down to feel like a horse? Just use the car as a car instead! ;)
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By your analogy, a GUI application is somehow better than a terminal one. Which it just isn't. You've got things backwards. A car that's stripped down to feel like a horse??? What the fuck are you on about?<p><pre><code>  > What context switch are you talking about
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For the fifty-thousandth time: launching an entirely new application, waiting a geological age while it gets its shit together, switching to it, getting my bearings, and finally actually viewing the file.<p><pre><code>  > Why can't the same folks not improve keyboard support in e.g. VLC? 
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How would that relieve me of the need to start VLC in your suggested workflow?<p><pre><code>  > I would be surprised if VLC is worse in that regard than some terminal thingy
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Who said anything about running a media player in a terminal?<p>(btw, off-subject, but there are a couple of really great terminal-based media players. And I can pretty much guarantee their keyboard controls are superior to vlc. But I'm not sure because I don't really try to keyboard control VLC. Because I don't have to. Because I don't have to launch it to preview a media file)<p>> You fire up a new tycat instance instead. Here VLC takes, idk, 500ms?!<p>I just fired up VLC. It took about 3 seconds (that's 3000ms, but what's 600% between friends?) from launch to a window being visible. According to htop, that empty VLC window with no file opened used up about 100Mb of my memory.<p>conversely:<p><pre><code>  $ time tycat /path/to/some_video.mp4
  real 0m0.142s
  user 0m0.117s
  sys0m0.043s
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I wasn't able to easily determine the ram used by tycat, because it closes so fast. But given how complicated it isn't, I'd expect it to be measured in kilobytes. I can (and have) written a bash script which is a very close equivalent to tycat as part of my command not found handle. It's 1.3Kb.<p><pre><code>  > What's the difference? 
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Well, about 2858ms, give or take. Or if you prefer: about 95.2%. And about 100Mb of RAM, give or take. And a context switch. And me taking my hand off the keyboard.<p><pre><code>  > Yeah, make them universally work on any virtual terminals, and then it'd be at least an interesting discussion
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Feel free to submit a PR to the makers of your preferred terminal. Or you could switch to a terminal that's less shit than the one you're using.<p>Why do you expect me to care what terminal you're using? Do you think I write software in the hope that you in particular will use it? If you want to use worse software and not be supported by my terminology-specific stuff, be my guest.<p><pre><code>  > As long as I need some E terminal, or a particular terminal that is "popular with the kids"
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When did anyone say you needed it or had to use it? I encouraged you to try it so that you might come off as less totally ignorant, but you're free to keep using your less-capable terminals and the worse software that works on them if you like. I don't actually care what you use.<p><pre><code>  > I really don't see at all why this is a good idea to spend any efforts for
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No, you really don't.<p>Just remember to go and set your terminal to not support colour - after all it's not supported by any of those amber-screens! And while you're at it you better disable those extended unicode characters and switch back to baudot code. You can probably find a punchcard reader if you look around.<p><pre><code>  > Just use the car as a car, instead of disabling the engine, pretending it to be a horse, and then find clever ways to make it feel more like a car again. It already _is_ a car. Don't make up artificial restrictions that do not exist, just in order to find mediocre ways to somehow patch parts of them away a bit.
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Your analogy is so hilariously flawed and backwards. It's very clear you don't understand. "disabling the engine"? Lol.<p>No.<p>Your terminal emulator is a horse. A tired, old horse. That's gray and boring and totally uninteresting. So uninteresting that you haven't even noticed it's got an infection in its foot.<p>Meanwhile, my terminal emulator is a horse with cybernetic legs and wings that allow it to break the sound barrier, and also fly. And if I keep messing around a bit I might be able to get it to do even more cool stuff. Who knows what exactly? Will all of it be groundbreaking and super useful immediately? Maybe not. But it'll be fun and interesting and it can already do shit you never even imagined was possible and can't even comprehend when I tell you about it, insisting on asking backwards questions like "well yeah but if it's flying then what happens with the horseshoes?"<p>Have fun with your old nag!<p><pre><code>  > Give Dolphin a chance!
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If I'm being honest, the chance of me ever trying any kde trash again is about 0.1%. Which in its defense is about 50 times more likely than me trying gnome trash. I'm sure it's just as bloated as the other ten thousand bloated file managers.<p>"patched terminal font"?? What the fuck are you talking about?? It's almost like you don't understand what you're talking about.<p><pre><code>  > Bonus: It can display emojis
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Your file manager can display emojis? Whoop-de-doo. Welcome to like, idk, 2010? Probably earlier tbh. Or are you bragging that your teminal emulator can display emojis? Like every terminal emulator I've seen for a <i>very</i> long time can, and like terminology could i don't even know how long ago because I've never seen it not do it.<p><pre><code>  > because the actual glyph width differs from what the "API" (i.e. dancing some escape sequences and somehow intercept the answers from somewhere) tells you.
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I'm just going to respond to this with something exactly as sensible and coherent. Here goes:<p>Argle bargle snerf blu carn delg bling blong blu barg sneh bork mert.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:19:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783057</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783057</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783057</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by antisol in "Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><p><pre><code>  > Why should graphical applications be fundamentally worse (e.g. in terms of keyboard support) than terminal applications when terminal emulators are a graphical application?
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Why don't you ask the makers of gui software?<p>> Yes. All these 800ms!<p>For you. This one time that you tested. It took almost an entire second. Or, another way you could say that would be "longer than it takes terminology to pop up a preview".<p>> Yeah, well, technically, of course. It just never felt like "waiting". It's a matter of milliseconds<p>Well then either dolphin is by some miracle orders of magnitude faster than any file browser I have ever seen (which includes earlier versions of dolphin that presumably have fewer features than the current one), or you're not viewing folders containing many files.  Or maybe you just have the fastest and most powerful computer ever built. Or perhaps you just don't have any expectation of a performant UI and consider twiddling your thumbs to be no big deal.<p>> terminal applications don't need to enumerate directories when they deal with it? How does that work?<p>They do need to enumerate files, obviously, but they don't need to - for each and every file  and subdirectory:<p>1. determine the mimetype for the tile, which may involve actually opening and reading the file<p>2. look up that mimetype in their "mime type -> friendly description" table<p>3. look up the default application that needs to be opened if you double-click on said file based on that mimetype<p>4. if the mimetype is "video" or "image", look in their cache for a thumbnail for the file, and if that doesn't exist fire up a thumbnailer to generate one, which likely involves opening and reading in the entire file.<p>6. load the aforementioned thumbnail into memory and display it in the appropriate place<p>7. as previously mentioned, enumerate and count the number of items in directories<p>8. I'm sure a bunch of other similar things that I can't even be bothered trying to remember right now.<p><pre><code>  > Even if you just press "tab" in your shell, it will probably do exactly that, no? 
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...interrogate every single file for its mimetype, load up a thumbnail for every single media file, and count the number of items in every single subdirectory? No, it will not do that when I press tab.<p><pre><code>  > I really don't see why terminal applications should be fundamentally faster than graphical applications in that regard
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..........um, what?<p>Seems to me like maybe you've never used a terminal program? Or perhaps you've never used a gui program? I'm not sure what to say to this. I don't think I've ever seen a piece of GUI software which comes close to the speed of its terminal-based equivalent. I'll grant you there are outliers, but those are rare and every single example I can think of doesn't use a GUI toolkit.<p>There are a few factors at play here. One big one (maybe the biggest?) is simply the complexity of the interface: Terminal emulators are built and optimised to display a whole bunch of text very quickly. They have one job: display text. GUIs and GUI toolkits, on the other hand, are huge complex libraries with a large number of different controls that they need to draw in the right place, do layout, have to deal with mouse interaction and event systems and the windowing system, deal with weird input methods and accessibility, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc. They're <i>orders of magnitude</i> more complex just in their interfaces. And that's before you start doing things like loading icons for every little button you're displaying and thumbnailing every media file in a directory so that you can load it as a pretty icon in your file manager. And before you start taking into account that a lot of gui software is just poorly written trash seemingly written by morons under the CADT model (Hi, gnome!).<p>GUIs are fine, and the best option for a bunch of things. But they're much <i>MUCH</i> less efficient than terminal-based programs.<p>I don't know what else to say. Go talk to every single GUI application author ever, I guess?<p><pre><code>  > your terminal emulator is a graphical application, right?
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Yes. One that's using a very limited set of GUI widgets compared to almost any other graphical program, and which has one job: display text. Indeed, the speed of terminals does have a marked effect on the speed of program execution in many cases: just try doing `time cp -Rv /usr /some/new/disk` - you'll spend a LOT of time just listing the hundreds of thousands of kilobyte-sized files you're copying, and the amount of text you're spitting out and scrolling your terminal emulator needs to do will slow down the file copying. If you compare this with `time cp -R /usr /some/new/disk` you'll find the non-verbose incantation to be <i>much</i> faster. Part of this is the fact that it doesn't need to run the printf statements, but much more of it is the time the terminal takes to output what is being printed, and <i>especially</i> scrolling. You'll also notice a pretty significant difference depending on which terminal you use - xterm will be faster than gnome-terminal, for example, because it's not bloated trash. KDE's terminal might be better than gnome's, but it will almost certainly not beat xterm. Nor will terminology. Similarly, running the verbose copy in a screen session and then switching to another 'window' in screen will speed up the copy, because even though it's verbose and running the printf statements, the terminal doesn't actually have to do the work of displaying the huge stream of text. Similarly, you can do a crude benchmark of your terminal's efficiency with bash by just spitting out a long line of text a million times and timing how long that takes.<p><pre><code>  > If you know the file name starts with "cat_s", then you can also find it this way in Dolphin.
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Sure. After you've waited almost an entire second, if you're lucky, for dolphin to start, and waited for it to enumerate all the files, and waited for it to count subdirectories, and waited for it to check its cache for thumbnails, etc etc etc etc etc etc.<p>Meanwhile, like I said, I'll already be half way through previewing the video, and my workflow won't involve switching to some worse program.<p><pre><code>  > There are corner cases where I really search in a trickier, more dynamic way. Maybe with "find". Or five lines of Python scripting. But not hundred times a day. Definitely it's not worth rewriting every application now as a terminal app (that tries to be a graphical app via niche-in-niche technologies).
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I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make here - that sometimes your preferred method is even more shit, and so you sometimes have to fall back to the one I default to? Who said anything about rewriting all programs for the terminal? Why would you do that? I already specifically said that "We do also use our graphical environment". Who said terminology is "trying to be a graphical app"?<p><pre><code>  > Yes, that's one of the things that I feel so spooky with that approach.
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I'm not sure why you insist on making this so complicated or acting like it's scary somehow.<p><pre><code>  > It cannot work... 
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I've already told you that it does, in fact, work. Very very well. Maybe you should try it out so that you have some idea what you're talking about before you start telling me that things I do all the time "cannot work".<p><pre><code>  > Maybe for a handful of persons that constantly search for jpeg/png/mpeg files, in bulk mode, and need quick previews.
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Did I say I use it "constantly"? I don't recall saying that. I use it as often as I need to. Because I can. Because it's there.<p>And it's a better experience <i>in literally every way imaginable</i> than firing up fucking dolphin and waiting for three ice ages and also an image/video viewer.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:58:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47781881</link><dc:creator>antisol</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47781881</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47781881</guid></item></channel></rss>