This is nonsensical, there is nothing textual about the UIs being shown here. It doesn't stop being a GUI if you have a 1:1 representation of the concept within character cells.
The UX actually matters, and TUIs are generally built for effectiveness and power (lazygit being an excellent example). But once you start addings mouse clickable tabs, buttons, checkboxes etc. you left the UX for TUIs and applied the UX expected for GUIs, it has become a GUI larping as a TUI.
You can tunnel a port over SSH and get a web UI locally, though it's not commonly done. I feel like more people would actually do this if tunneling a port was just ever so slightly easier
I really don't want my TUI's to look like GUI's rendered in low res. The appeal to me of a TUI is that it is built specifically to be a TUI, and that means eschewing complexity and detail, and favouring compact text.
> Design once, generate production-ready code for your framework of choice. Switch targets without touching your design. Alpha notice: Code export is not functional yet. We're actively working on it — check back soon.
In other words, it isn't at all usable right now. You can't produce a TUI with it, not even a limited one.
I'm not sure that's a fair criticism. Many things require or benefit from something even more complex to make them (car -> factory, code -> IDE, text -> editor, food -> kitchen). I think the real debate here is that which is found in the other comments: do we want TUIs to look like GUIs?
> No install fuss — download and start designing immediately.
also
> Gatekeeper blocks the app immediately. You'll see either "TUIStudio cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer" or "TUIStudio is damaged and can't be opened" on newer macOS after quarantine flags the binary.
To get past it: right-click the .app → Open → Open anyway — or go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → "Open Anyway".
This is so cool I immediately wanted to convert my apps. But then when I thought about it, well it's trying to recreate CSS but in a majorly worse way.
Browsers are ubiquitous and I can just tell ai to build a web page.
I can't really see a use case other than novelty.
This is nonsensical, there is nothing textual about the UIs being shown here. It doesn't stop being a GUI if you have a 1:1 representation of the concept within character cells.
The UX actually matters, and TUIs are generally built for effectiveness and power (lazygit being an excellent example). But once you start addings mouse clickable tabs, buttons, checkboxes etc. you left the UX for TUIs and applied the UX expected for GUIs, it has become a GUI larping as a TUI.
One justification for TUIs is remote access over SSH.
You can tunnel a port over SSH and get a web UI locally, though it's not commonly done. I feel like more people would actually do this if tunneling a port was just ever so slightly easier
Sure, but my point was that UX matters for TUIs. A TUI with a UX that fits its paradigm , again like lazygit, works great over SSH.
I really don't want my TUI's to look like GUI's rendered in low res. The appeal to me of a TUI is that it is built specifically to be a TUI, and that means eschewing complexity and detail, and favouring compact text.
Interesting idea, but:
> Design once, generate production-ready code for your framework of choice. Switch targets without touching your design. Alpha notice: Code export is not functional yet. We're actively working on it — check back soon.
In other words, it isn't at all usable right now. You can't produce a TUI with it, not even a limited one.
Why did they make a website?
When your TUI is so complex that you need a GUI to design it, perhaps you shouldn't use TUI in the first place.
I'm not sure that's a fair criticism. Many things require or benefit from something even more complex to make them (car -> factory, code -> IDE, text -> editor, food -> kitchen). I think the real debate here is that which is found in the other comments: do we want TUIs to look like GUIs?
This is going to end up with TUIs that resemble old BBS ANSI art, such as https://16colo.rs/
It completely misses the reason people like current TUIs.
FWIW, I still love to see the old BBS UIs and ANSI art. But that's probably just nostalgia talking.
The background ASCII animation is so cool! Is it an actual simulation?
Turbo Vision strikes back
> No install fuss — download and start designing immediately.
also
> Gatekeeper blocks the app immediately. You'll see either "TUIStudio cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer" or "TUIStudio is damaged and can't be opened" on newer macOS after quarantine flags the binary. To get past it: right-click the .app → Open → Open anyway — or go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → "Open Anyway".
tbf that's Apple's fault, not the choice of the free, unpaid open source developer.
Apple's fault that they didn't bother to edit the text that says "No install fuss"?
Watched the video. Why isn't the editor a TUI itself?
Great question.
This is so cool I immediately wanted to convert my apps. But then when I thought about it, well it's trying to recreate CSS but in a majorly worse way.
Browsers are ubiquitous and I can just tell ai to build a web page. I can't really see a use case other than novelty.
k9s, ncdu, htop, powertop are good showcases how a TUI reduces mental load and are superior to browsers and / or other GUI tools
Look up Visual Basic for Dos for a surprisingly good TUI editor!
tip: your git repo's description (not readme, repo description) does not link the website. It should.
Also fill the Website field in About section.
I don’t want to be a curmudgeon, but why not just use CSS, HTML, React, etc. at this point? You could choose a style that looks like a TUI.
I could be wrong, the corners of the boxes appear in the wrong place in the cell.
I don't think there is utf8 characters that allow for drawing on the outside of the cell, (happy to be wrong)
┌ (U+250C), ┐ (U+2510), └ (U+2514), ┘ (U+2518) <-- these 4 draw in the middle of the cell.
｢ (U+FF62), ⌟, (U+231F), <-- these are two that cover part of the outside, but not the other corners.
｢┐└｣
Can anyone tells me how to get those 'corner of cell' characters, including uprights and horizontals ?
The website UI is unreal, I loved the idea
Noice figma for terminals! Dude super cool idea, great job =D
I find it slightly annoying and disappointing that the blocks saying what frameworks it's designed to export to aren't links to those frameworks.
Amazing cool design tool for TUI's I got it running instantly and it feels stable and complete as well. Only 10 stars in GitHub.
this looks insanely cool.
One of the most original ideas I have seen on HackerNews in the past few years.