Thank you for your attention, maybe I need clarify more.
Is this a Windows-only program?
For now it is, but WindTerm is developped by Qt, so MacOs and Linux will be supported in feature.
Why is SSH and Telnet listed as “supported”? Won’t any terminal emulator support those protocols via an executable?
Of course not, for example Alacritty, which telnet and ssh are depending on system's tools, like openssh and etc. WindTerm implemented the protocols itself, like securecrt.
What differentiates this from Alacritty, Kitty, or iTerm2? These “modern terminals” are not included in benchmarks.
If you concerned Alacritty, you will see it also compared to rxvt, because rxvt is one of the most fast terminals.
What differentiates this from Microsoft’s new terminal?
Features are listed, like coloring, folding.
I'll also put this on WindTerm's readme.
> Of course not, for example Alacritty, which telnet and ssh are depending on system's tools, like openssh and etc.
I'm not sure i follow... a terminal emulator is a display. it is basically only there to visualize your shell (i.e. bash, zsh, fish, etc).
From this sentence alone it sounds more like MobaXTerm or RoyalTS than a terminal. Which is fine, but shouldn't be called a terminal emulator, as thats not what it is.
> If you concerned Alacritty, you will see it also compared to rxvt, because rxvt is one of the most fast terminals.
thats a very feeble argument. Alacritty is - to my knowledge - the only terminal emulator with GPU Acceleration. So yeah, if you don't have a good dedicated graphics card, you won't really get any performance improvements over the usual terminal editors which only utilize the CPU... but its just plain wrong to equate their performance.
> What differentiates this from Microsoft’s new terminal? Features are listed, like coloring, folding.
i'm not sure i follow here either... the coloring is set by the shell - the emulator just displays the colors. and windows terminal does support colours
and folding doesnt really look like something i'd ever want to use...
Thank you for your attention again. First I want to let you know that I have just tested iterm2, kitty and Alacritty under MacOS as you wish. If you have interesting, you may have a look at the new test results. One more thing, "emulator" has been removed too, thank you for your point out.
I have been developing windterm for many many years. Based on my data analytics, terminal only spend 2% of the time to show text if you use threads to separate the socket read and text display. So it doesn't matter if you use GPU or not. Of course, use GPU is a very good thing, especially it can display more smoothly and draw emoji characters correctly. But as you can see, windterm still has very high performance without GPU acceleration. GPU also has its disadvantage, most virtual machines on cloud have no GPU emulated, so you can not use Alacritty on them.
The last thing, coloring, This is why I have spent so much time creating windterm in the past many years. The emulator traditionally displays the colors from server, but you know only a few poor text has its color. So for a long time, terminals should depends ZSH or auto-color-ls plugin and etc. to provide additional colors to make text more readable.
But why do we have to endure this? Text editors have already know how to styling a code file or script and done it well for more than 40 years!
So it took me some time to implement a text editor, and then I use its styling engine to coloring the text in terminal. That's why you can see a gorgeous colorful terminal. Prompt, numbers, strings and so on all have its color while maintaining the color from server if they have.
We deserve to have a colorful world, even in terminals, is it not?
Believe me, I understand ssh well:) I known you can ssh virtual machines, but you just can't run alacritty on them, even in windows sandbox.
Everyone has their own selection, I respect and also keep mine. So don't worry, everything is just the beginning, I will try my best to create a good terminal, just like what I did in the past.
I'm curious, why do you think anyone would want to run Alacritty (or any other terminal emulator) on the remote host?
The terminal emulator is something I run on my workstation (where the GPU is located), from which I SSH to the remote, where it makes no difference whether it has a GPU or not.
I mean the local computer for someone who want to run alacritty is also a virtual machine. Many companies have not provided physical machines any more. There are only virtual machines without GPU available for employees to work on the cloud, so the companies can save money and control everything, especially you can not bring anything away.
I believe this is a trend. Maybe one day just like IBM CEO Watson said he thought there was a world market "for maybe five computers".
Folding text sometimes allows you to quickly browse all the commands inputted. But it doesn't matter if you don't want to use, just ignore it or shut it. A tool always used by various people, and everyone has their own unique needs. As a tool maker, every need needs to be carefully met.
It’s not a good idea to use a public GitHub repository for closed-source software support.
If you want any of your “innovations” to catch on, you better make them free. Otherwise good luck with a product almost no one is going to see a need to pay for. Who exactly is your target audience as customers?
Windterm will be moved to its own web site in the coming months.
And windterm repository will still exists on github, as I said, many code of it will be gradually released, like some library, classes of data structs, schemes, etc. That is why I created windterm repository on github. I just need time to clean these code when many new features are still waiting to be realized.
I love github and open source, but after experienced last failed open source project of mine, I won't release the whole windterm project any more, lots of feature requests and several tough issues make me exhausted.
Count me as interested in a terminal that supports “infinite” scrollback, while keeping memory usage deterministic. Apply color styling heuristically based on content is interesting. I’m assuming this only kicks in if color is not applied inside the term? Being able to cat an xml/json/source file and get decent styling sounds quite cool. Also hard.
You might want to setup a non-github landing page. While you certainly can use github for anything (within their tos), user expectations are that open source tools are hosted there.
Spin up a quick landing site (even just use something like squarespace) and capture some animated gifs showing your distinctive features in action.
I agree that you’ll have a hard time selling this as a product - there are too many “pretty damn good” versions of terminals to get folks to pay.
Have you thought of offering an embeddable component? I can imagine a number of great uses for a lightweight, native, customizable text control with the features described. I think we’re reaching peek Electron, and fully baked native text control/editor would be a differentiator.
Perhaps offer the terminal for free and commercialize the component?
Either way, HN is a tough crowd, especially with commercial products, so don’t take it to personally.
Take the constructive part of the criticism and pursue your passion.
Thank you for every suggestion. Windterm hosted in github is just because many of it will be open source, and github is also very important for windterm. This is only the first release, many things will be done in the feature. If you want to create a great terminal to make users's life easier, you can't do things alone.
For example, text editors have created a lot of schemes for python, java, c++, even ada, shell script and etc, so they can provide autocomplete, color styling, folding, lint and so on. But what have done for the systems? Do we have an autocomplete list for Ubuntu's commands of each version? Do we have a whole scheme for every command and every option of Windows's cmd or Macos's bash? How can terminals provide features without these?
What is the soul of a terminal? The soul is only lies in the text in them. If we want to click a traceback line in a terminal and then open the error source file and jump to the error line to instead of a lot redundant operations, copy the path, open it in an editor , scroll to the error line, we must need to know what does the tranceback mean. So everything I talked, we need a lot of people's help, just like they have helped text editors in past half of century.
When all this have done, every terminal can share the schemes library to provide good features, and everyone has a lot of good tools to choose. I think it is more important than I just open the windterm's source. I call this true open source too.
It's not shameful for me to talk about money if I can make a lot of people happier when they using a more useful terminal, but I do care the terminal more than the money. Money is only a byproduct, with or without it, I am still very happy if I make my terminal dreams come to true.
I’m assuming this only kicks in if color is not applied inside the term?
You are right, if the text has color from server, the color will be respected and will not be styled again. Or many tools like vi will show a mess.
Being able to cat an xml/json/source file and get decent styling sounds quite cool.
Think a little more boldly. If we can piped the output of cat to a real text editor and let you view and modify and save it more easier:) Just pop up its content when you cat a file.
Have you thought of offering an embeddable component?
No, never. I think a good tool must guarantee its integrity. But the idea and method can be offered to others, like google introduced MapReduce and BigTable.
Perhaps offer the terminal for free and commercialize the component?
Windterm will always free for personal usage. I am very happy if someone will like to use my terminal. For companies, if they don't sell their products for money, they can use windterm for free too.
17 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 51.8 ms ] threadThere does not seem to be any source code around, nor even a binary download link (???).
Is this a Windows-only program?
Why is SSH and Telnet listed as “supported”? Won’t any terminal emulator support those protocols via an executable?
What differentiates this from Alacritty, Kitty, or iTerm2? These “modern terminals” are not included in benchmarks.
What differentiates this from Microsoft’s new terminal?
What differentiates this from the Powershell IDE thing?
I'm not sure i follow... a terminal emulator is a display. it is basically only there to visualize your shell (i.e. bash, zsh, fish, etc).
From this sentence alone it sounds more like MobaXTerm or RoyalTS than a terminal. Which is fine, but shouldn't be called a terminal emulator, as thats not what it is.
> If you concerned Alacritty, you will see it also compared to rxvt, because rxvt is one of the most fast terminals.
thats a very feeble argument. Alacritty is - to my knowledge - the only terminal emulator with GPU Acceleration. So yeah, if you don't have a good dedicated graphics card, you won't really get any performance improvements over the usual terminal editors which only utilize the CPU... but its just plain wrong to equate their performance.
> What differentiates this from Microsoft’s new terminal? Features are listed, like coloring, folding.
i'm not sure i follow here either... the coloring is set by the shell - the emulator just displays the colors. and windows terminal does support colours
and folding doesnt really look like something i'd ever want to use...
I have been developing windterm for many many years. Based on my data analytics, terminal only spend 2% of the time to show text if you use threads to separate the socket read and text display. So it doesn't matter if you use GPU or not. Of course, use GPU is a very good thing, especially it can display more smoothly and draw emoji characters correctly. But as you can see, windterm still has very high performance without GPU acceleration. GPU also has its disadvantage, most virtual machines on cloud have no GPU emulated, so you can not use Alacritty on them.
The last thing, coloring, This is why I have spent so much time creating windterm in the past many years. The emulator traditionally displays the colors from server, but you know only a few poor text has its color. So for a long time, terminals should depends ZSH or auto-color-ls plugin and etc. to provide additional colors to make text more readable.
But why do we have to endure this? Text editors have already know how to styling a code file or script and done it well for more than 40 years!
So it took me some time to implement a text editor, and then I use its styling engine to coloring the text in terminal. That's why you can see a gorgeous colorful terminal. Prompt, numbers, strings and so on all have its color while maintaining the color from server if they have.
We deserve to have a colorful world, even in terminals, is it not?
i'm not sure you understand how the ssh protocol actually works...
i wish you luck though. building stuff is its own reward and don't let random strangers on the internet discourage you
Everyone has their own selection, I respect and also keep mine. So don't worry, everything is just the beginning, I will try my best to create a good terminal, just like what I did in the past.
The terminal emulator is something I run on my workstation (where the GPU is located), from which I SSH to the remote, where it makes no difference whether it has a GPU or not.
I believe this is a trend. Maybe one day just like IBM CEO Watson said he thought there was a world market "for maybe five computers".
iTerm2 has had GPU acceleration via the Metal framework for quite some time now.
If you want any of your “innovations” to catch on, you better make them free. Otherwise good luck with a product almost no one is going to see a need to pay for. Who exactly is your target audience as customers?
And windterm repository will still exists on github, as I said, many code of it will be gradually released, like some library, classes of data structs, schemes, etc. That is why I created windterm repository on github. I just need time to clean these code when many new features are still waiting to be realized.
I love github and open source, but after experienced last failed open source project of mine, I won't release the whole windterm project any more, lots of feature requests and several tough issues make me exhausted.
Count me as interested in a terminal that supports “infinite” scrollback, while keeping memory usage deterministic. Apply color styling heuristically based on content is interesting. I’m assuming this only kicks in if color is not applied inside the term? Being able to cat an xml/json/source file and get decent styling sounds quite cool. Also hard.
You might want to setup a non-github landing page. While you certainly can use github for anything (within their tos), user expectations are that open source tools are hosted there.
Spin up a quick landing site (even just use something like squarespace) and capture some animated gifs showing your distinctive features in action.
I agree that you’ll have a hard time selling this as a product - there are too many “pretty damn good” versions of terminals to get folks to pay.
Have you thought of offering an embeddable component? I can imagine a number of great uses for a lightweight, native, customizable text control with the features described. I think we’re reaching peek Electron, and fully baked native text control/editor would be a differentiator.
Perhaps offer the terminal for free and commercialize the component?
Either way, HN is a tough crowd, especially with commercial products, so don’t take it to personally.
Take the constructive part of the criticism and pursue your passion.
For example, text editors have created a lot of schemes for python, java, c++, even ada, shell script and etc, so they can provide autocomplete, color styling, folding, lint and so on. But what have done for the systems? Do we have an autocomplete list for Ubuntu's commands of each version? Do we have a whole scheme for every command and every option of Windows's cmd or Macos's bash? How can terminals provide features without these?
What is the soul of a terminal? The soul is only lies in the text in them. If we want to click a traceback line in a terminal and then open the error source file and jump to the error line to instead of a lot redundant operations, copy the path, open it in an editor , scroll to the error line, we must need to know what does the tranceback mean. So everything I talked, we need a lot of people's help, just like they have helped text editors in past half of century.
When all this have done, every terminal can share the schemes library to provide good features, and everyone has a lot of good tools to choose. I think it is more important than I just open the windterm's source. I call this true open source too.
It's not shameful for me to talk about money if I can make a lot of people happier when they using a more useful terminal, but I do care the terminal more than the money. Money is only a byproduct, with or without it, I am still very happy if I make my terminal dreams come to true.
I’m assuming this only kicks in if color is not applied inside the term?
You are right, if the text has color from server, the color will be respected and will not be styled again. Or many tools like vi will show a mess.
Being able to cat an xml/json/source file and get decent styling sounds quite cool.
Think a little more boldly. If we can piped the output of cat to a real text editor and let you view and modify and save it more easier:) Just pop up its content when you cat a file.
Have you thought of offering an embeddable component?
No, never. I think a good tool must guarantee its integrity. But the idea and method can be offered to others, like google introduced MapReduce and BigTable.
Perhaps offer the terminal for free and commercialize the component?
Windterm will always free for personal usage. I am very happy if someone will like to use my terminal. For companies, if they don't sell their products for money, they can use windterm for free too.