On Fri, Mar 13, 2020 at 03:05:41PM +0200, Ciprian Dorin Craciun wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 13, 2020 at 10:53 AM Tobias Bengfort
> <tobias.bengfort_AT_posteo.de> wrote:
> > I am surely not the first to come up with this[1], but I think many X
> > tools could be replaced by TUIs running in st. Think about this quick
> > example (dmenu replacement):
>
>
> I myself pondered the same thing some while ago, however I didn't
> proceed onto experimentation, mainly because I use `rofi` which (like
> `dmenu`) has some other advantages that `st` doesn't like for example
> window placement relative to currently active monitor, etc.
>
> However another disadvantage of `st` + `fzf` as a replacement for
> `dmenu` / `rofi` / etc. is perhaps performance.
>
> For example I've tested the following (`heredoc` is part of the
> `execline` suite, it is used as a `bash` replacement in your snippet,
> and I use it both for `dmenu` and `rofi` in order to keep the
> comparison fair):
>
> ````
> time st heredoc 0 $'a\nb\nc\n' fzf
> time heredoc 0 $'a\nb\nc\n' dmenu -l 10
> time heredoc 0 $'a\nb\nc\n' rofi -dmenu
> ````
>
> And the following is the `user` and `sys` timing for these:
> * for `dmenu` around 20ms + 5ms;
> * for `rofi` around 35ms + 10ms;
> * for `st` + `fzf` around 50ms + 20ms;
>
> Although even `st` + `fzf` feels snappy enough, I did feel some lag
> compared to the other.
>
>
>
>
> > The interesting thing about this is that you replace all the complexity
> > of X (e.g. font rendering) with all the complexities of the terminal
> > (e.g. ANSI escape codes).
>
>
> I don't think this would be a major issue. In fact I think more
> simple applications might sprout that would reuse `st` as a "display
> server".
>
>
>
>
> > I believe there could be changes to st that would make this kind of
> > usage simpler, e.g. an option for full-width or to automatically attach
> > stdin/stdout to the command (fzf in this case).
>
>
> Yup. As mentioned earlier, `rofi` and `dmenu` have some advantages in
> the window placement area that are essential.
>
> However I believe this would quickly become out-of-scope from `st`...
>
> Ciprian.
Interesting for you to mention fzf. I'd like to suggest that you look
into the following patch for dmenu:
http://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/patches/fuzzymatch/
If it would avoid users having to search out long-winded solutions to a
simple issue, then I'd fully support merging it into the main dmenu
source.
--
Hayden
Received on Sat Mar 14 2020 - 20:03:00 CET