Re: [dev] [st] goals / non-goals for st?

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 10:01 PM, Kurt H Maier <karmaflux_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>> A feature I wouldn't mind seeing in st would be the ability to spawn
>> st as a direct endpoint to a pipe (not sure if that's already
>> possible?). This would allow st to be used as a quick popup to display
>> information, or as part of a multi-terminal application like an irc
>> client, without needing to spawn an extra shell or consume an extra
>> pty.

I also like this idea. And I think it's pretty easy to implement :
exec your program instead of the shell. You may have to hack a bit
with dup.

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 2:40 AM, Uriel <lost.goblin_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 11:34 PM, Aled Gest <himselfe_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>> Are you suggesting that we shouldn't develop new software because no
>> existing software does what we want? I've seen no strict definition
>> specifying how a terminal emulator must communicate with other
>> processes. Whether it acts like a host process spawning a child and
>> communicating through a PTY, or gets spawned as a child process itself
>> reading and writing directly through pipes, it's still a terminal
>> emulator.
>
> That the concept of 'pty' still exists in the year 2009 is quite
> fucking amazing. I'm surprised we don't carry punchcards around
> anymore.

I was thinking the exact same thing when I wrote the pty part.
They're not well documented, they're really dated and every OS handle
them differently (when they handle them at all), some functions are
POSIX, some of them BSD-only (but are implemented in linux...).

On a different subject, the current design of st is not really adapted
to the things it's supposed to do (see the goal page). When I started
st (originaly bt) I just wanted a simple terminal (simple as in simple
tiny and sane xterm replacement) but the suckless goals are obviously
different. So st will need a rewrite at some point. (thank you captain
obvious, etc)
Received on Sat Oct 31 2009 - 10:11:46 UTC