Just of note, TUI stands for terminal user interface, not text!
Comment on What does non-gui mean ?
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
TUI. Text User Interface. Command line. Terminal. You interact with the application via the keyboard, rather than a mouse, touchscreen, trackpad, etc.
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Successful_Try543@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Both definitions seem to be present:
In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI) (alternately terminal user interfaces, to reflect a dependence upon the properties of computer terminals and not just text), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an early form of human–computer interaction, before the advent of bitmapped displays and modern conventional graphical user interfaces (GUIs).
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Huh, I didn’t know that. Pretty interesting! I wonder how many acronyms have multiple different long forms…
LoveEspresso@cafe.coffee-break.cc 2 weeks ago
Can literally everything be tui ?
ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
No but many things can be. There’s also a distinction between a CLI (command line interface) and TUIs (terminal user interface); like stuff built using ncurses which is a popular TUI library.
Things that need graphics don’t work well as a TUI. For example, it would be pretty hard to make a 3d modelling application like Blender make sense in a terminal…
cockmushroom@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
Someone wrote a terminal that can render a 3d model of a cat as the cursor and rotate the contents of windows
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
there’s OpenSCAD which uses a whonky scripting/programing language to build 3d models. You can do quite a bit in it, if know what you’re doing- and the neat part is that the files, so they don’t take a lot of space.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yup. though a lot of things are more effecient and easily understood with GUIs than command line interfaces. Imagine a volume slider. on the other hand there’s a lot of things that are much more convenient in a terminal window.
sure. you can use
amixer sset Master 50%to set volume to 50%, but it’s faster and more intuitive to use the GUI for it.
ComfortableRaspberry@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
but it’s faster and more intuitive to use the GUI for it. As someone with a tremor in both hands: sliders are assholes!
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
And then there’s that.
oats@piefed.zip 2 weeks ago
It literally takes me a longer time to move my hand over to the pointer and slide the little arrow to the volume controls than it takes me to tap the terminal button and give a short command. Point is moot for me personally though, as volume always stays mute :D
The good thing is, a proper operating system just let’s you do what works for you. Obviously there is no one way that’s best for everyone.
Successful_Try543@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
As you said, that’s an example of a CLI, yet a TUI would be something different, e.g. like the non-graphical installer of your dear Linux distribution.
zloubida@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Yes technically. Practically some software would be objectively awful without a graphical interface, like image modification.
cabbage@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
ImageMagick is amazing for command line image manipulation, but the use case is of course different. It’s great if you need to do the exact same operation to a bunch of pictures, such as rotating or rescaling.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Exactly. A TUI is not a replacement for a GUI where human interaction is essential to the process.
But, very few computer processes require direct human input. The overwhelming majority of individual operations are performed silently in the background. The presence of a TUI in an image modification program allows for certain operations to be performed automatically, in the background, without a human ever needing to be involved. I actually needed to do this, to add what was basically a watermark and a date stamp to a PDF document via an image modification program. Repeated 80-120 times a day, 6 days a week. A TUI allows for the tying together of a half dozen simple operations into a functional system.
Successful_Try543@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Exactly. A TUI is not a replacement for a GUI where human interaction is essential to the process.
You’re thinking of a CLI, a TUI allows for human interaction.
foodandart@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Yes.
spongebue@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There’s also voice user interfaces! I’m not sure if it goes by another name, but blind people have their own way of using a phone, plus there’s a lot of voice control when driving or using Alexa and the like