cracauer@
Developer
I observe an increasing tendency of TUI/terminal software that needs special "advanced" terminal emulators.
Homebrew on macOS is an example. If I am on FreeBSD in an xterm and ssh into one of my Macs, I can't directly run homebrew commands to manage software. The problem being that theyy use terminal sequences that xterm doesn't understand and that end up spewing into control sequences making a mess, and a potentialy dangerous one. Of course nobody stopped to think about using termcap for this, which would (as the name implies) either send the right sequences, or at least not send ones not understood.
Likewise, Claude Code (the so-called CLI that is really a TUI) also requires special terminals, otherwise output is garbled. And they say that they need them to process Shift-Return. Never mind that Shift-Return works just fine on xterm. https://code.claude.com/docs/en/terminal-config
Now, what are th terminals wanted? The two non-Mac specific ones are ghostty and kitty. Both have FreeBSD ports. So I can open one of them on my FreeBSD screen and then use Claude Code or ssh into a Mac. Sounds good? Not quite. Both are using 3D APIs (Vulkan and OpenGL) and have no fallback to X11. So you can have one over ssh forwarding. Configuration is also laughable compare to xterm. Big loss of functionality here.
Opinions? I wish I could blame this on Linuxisms, but half of it is Mac driven. Weak rant?
Is anybody voluntarily using ghostty or kitty?
Homebrew on macOS is an example. If I am on FreeBSD in an xterm and ssh into one of my Macs, I can't directly run homebrew commands to manage software. The problem being that theyy use terminal sequences that xterm doesn't understand and that end up spewing into control sequences making a mess, and a potentialy dangerous one. Of course nobody stopped to think about using termcap for this, which would (as the name implies) either send the right sequences, or at least not send ones not understood.
Likewise, Claude Code (the so-called CLI that is really a TUI) also requires special terminals, otherwise output is garbled. And they say that they need them to process Shift-Return. Never mind that Shift-Return works just fine on xterm. https://code.claude.com/docs/en/terminal-config
Now, what are th terminals wanted? The two non-Mac specific ones are ghostty and kitty. Both have FreeBSD ports. So I can open one of them on my FreeBSD screen and then use Claude Code or ssh into a Mac. Sounds good? Not quite. Both are using 3D APIs (Vulkan and OpenGL) and have no fallback to X11. So you can have one over ssh forwarding. Configuration is also laughable compare to xterm. Big loss of functionality here.
Opinions? I wish I could blame this on Linuxisms, but half of it is Mac driven. Weak rant?
Is anybody voluntarily using ghostty or kitty?
