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----
-title: Trying to build a New kind of terminal emulator for the modern age
-url: trying-to-build-a-new-kind-of-terminal-emulator.html
-date: 2023-01-26T12:00:00+02:00
-draft: false
----
-
-Over the past few weeks, I have been really thinking about terminal emulators,
-how we interact with computers, the separation of text-based programs and GUI
-ones. To be perfectly honest, I got pissed off one evening when I was cleaning
-up files on my computer. Normally, I go into console and do `ncdu` and check
-where the junk is. Then I start deleting stuff. Without any discrimination,
-usually. But when it comes to screenshots, I have learned that it's good to keep
-them somewhere near if I need to refer to something that I was doing. I am an
-avid screenshot taker. So at that point I checked Pictures folder and also did a
-basic search `find . -type f -name "*.jpg"` for all the JPEG files in my home
-directory and immediately got pissed off. Why can’t I see thumbnails in my
-terminal? I know why, but why in the year of 2022 this is still a problem. I am
-used to traversing my disk via terminal. I am faster, and I am more comfortable
-this way. But when it comes to visualization, I then need to revert to GUI
-applications and again find the same file to see it. I know that programs like
-`feh` and `sxiv` are available, but I would just like to see the preview. Like
-[Jupyter notebook](https://jupyter.org/) or something similar.  Just having it
-inline. Part of a result.
-
-It also didn’t help that I was spending some time with the [Plan
-9](https://plan9.io/plan9/) Operating system. More specifically
-[9FRONT](http://9front.org/). The way that [ACME editor](http://acme.cat-v.org/)
-handles text editing is just wonderful. Different and fresh somehow, even though
-it’s super old.
-
-So, I went on a lookout for an interesting way of visualizing results of some
-query. I found these applications to be outstanding examples of how not to be a
-captive of a predetermined way of doing things.
-
-- [Wolfram Mathematica](https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/)
-- [Jupyter notebooks](https://jupyter.org/)
-- [Plan 9 / 9FRONT](http://www.9front.org)
-- [Temple OS](https://templeos.org/)
-- [Emacs](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/)
-
-My idea is not as out there as ACME is, but it is a spin on the terminal
-emulators. I like the modes that Vi/Vim provides you with. I like the way the
-Emacs does its own `M-x` `M-c`.  Furthermore, I really like how Mathematica and
-Jupyter present the data in a free flowing form. And I love how Temple OS is
-basically a C interpreter on some level.
-
-> **Note:** This is part 1 of the journey. Nowhere finished yet. I am just 
-> tinkering with this at the moment. This whole thing can easily spectacularly 
-> fail.
-
-So I started. I knew that I wanted to have the couple of modes, but I didn’t
-like the repetition of keystrokes, so the only option was to have some sort of
-toggle and indicate to the user that they are in a special mode. Like Vi does
-for Normal and Visual mode.
-
-These modes would for the first version be:
-
-- *Preview mode* (toggle with Ctrl + P)
-    - When this mode would be enabled, the `ls` command would try to find images
-    from the results and display thumbnails from them in the terminal itself.
-    No ASCII art. Proper images. In a grid!
-- *Detach mode* (toggle with Ctrl + D)
-    - When this mode would be enabled, every command would open a new window 
-    and execute that command in it. This would be useful for starting `htop` 
-    in a separate window.
-
-The reason for having these modes togglable is to not ask for previews every
-time. You enable a mode and until you disable it, it behaves that way.  Purely
-out of ergonomic reasons.
-
-I would like to treat every terminal I open as a session mentally. When I start
-using the terminal, I start digging deeper into the issue I am trying to
-resolve.  And while I am doing this, I would like to open detached windows
-etc. A lot of these things can be done easily with something like
-[i3](https://i3wm.org/), but also that pull you out of the context of what you
-were doing. I would like to orchestrate everything from one single point.
-
-In planning for this project, I knew that I would need to use a language like C
-and a library such as [SDL2](https://www.libsdl.org/) in order to achieve the
-desired results. I had considered other options, but ultimately determined that
-[SDL2](https://www.libsdl.org/) was the best fit based on its capabilities and
-reputation in the programming community.
-
-At first, I thought the idea of a hardware accelerated terminal was a bit of a
-joke. It seemed like such a niche and unnecessary feature, especially given the
-fact that terminal emulators have been around for decades and have always relied
-on software rendering. But to be fair, [Alacritty](https://alacritty.org/) is
-doing the same thing. Well, they are doing a remarkable job at it.
-
-So, I embarked on a journey. Everything has to start somewhere. For me, it
-started with creating a window! It has to start somewhere. 🙂
-
-```c
-// Oh, Hi Mark!
-// Create the window, obviously.
-SDL_Window *window = SDL_CreateWindow(
-  WINDOW_TITLE, SDL_WINDOWPOS_UNDEFINED, SDL_WINDOWPOS_UNDEFINED,
-  WINDOW_WIDTH, WINDOW_HEIGHT,
-  SDL_WINDOW_RESIZABLE | SDL_WINDOW_OPENGL | SDL_WINDOW_SHOWN);
-```
-
-I continued like this to get some text displayed on the screen.
-
-I noted that
-[`TTF_RenderText_Solid`](https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL_ttf/TTF_RenderText_Solid)
-rendered text really poorly. There were no antialiasing at all. In my wisdom, I
-never checked the documentation. Well, that was a fail. To uneducated like me:
-`TTF_RenderText_Solid` renders Latin1 text at fast quality to a new 8-bit
-surface. So, that's why the texts looked like shit. No wonder.
-
-Remarks on `TTF_RenderText_Solid`: This function will allocate a new 8-bit,
-palettized surface. The surface's 0 pixel will be the colorkey, giving a
-transparent background. The 1 pixel will be set to the text color.
-
-After I replaced it with
-[`TTF_RenderText_LCD`](https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL_ttf/TTF_RenderText_LCD) which
-renders Latin1 text at LCD subpixel quality to a new ARGB surface, the text
-started looking good. Really make sure you read the documentation. It’s actually
-good. As a side note, you can find all the documentation regarding [SDL2 on
-their Wiki](https://wiki.libsdl.org/).
-
-After that was done, I started working on displaying other things like `Preview`
-and `Detach` modes. This wasn’t really that hard. In SDL2 you can check all the
-available events with `while (SDL_PollEvent(&event) > 0)` and have a bunch of
-switch statements to determine which key is currently being pressed. More about
-keys, [SDLKey](https://documentation.help/SDL/sdlkey.html) and mroe about
-pooling the events on
-[SDL_PollEvent](https://documentation.help/SDL/sdlpollevent.html).
-
-```c
-while (SDL_PollEvent(&event) > 0)
-{
-  switch (event.type)
-  {
-  case SDL_QUIT:
-    running = false;
-    break;
-
-  case SDL_TEXTINPUT:
-    if (!meta_key_pressed)
-    {
-      strncat(input_prompt_text, event.text.text, 1);
-      update_input_prompt = true;
-    }
-    break;
-        }
-}
-```
-
-After that was somewhat working correctly, I started creating a struct that
-would hold all the commands and results and I call them Cells. Yes, I stole that
-naming idea from Jupyter.
-
-```c
-typedef struct
-{
-  char *command;
-  char *result;
-  SDL_Surface *surface;
-  SDL_Texture *texture;
-  SDL_Rect rect;
-} Cell;
-```
-
-I am at a place now where I am starting to implement scrolling. This will for
-sure be fun to code. Memory management in C is super easy. 😂
-
-I have also added a simple [INI file like
-configuration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INI_file) support. It is done in an
-[STB style of
-header](https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/docs/stb_howto.txt) and maps
-to specific options supported by the terminal. It is not universal, and the code
-below demonstrates how I will use it in the future.
-
-```c
-#ifndef CONFIG_H
-#define CONFIG_H
-
-/*
-# This is a comment
-
-# This is the first configuration option
-dettach=value11111
-
-# This is the second configuration option
-preview=value22222
-
-# This is the third configuration option
-debug=value33333
-*/
-
-// Define a struct to hold the configuration options
-typedef struct
-{
-    char dettach[256];
-    char preview[256];
-    char debug[256];
-} Config;
-
-// Read the configuration file and return the options as a struct
-extern Config read_config_file(const char *filename)
-{
-  // Create a struct to hold the configuration options
-  Config config = {0};
-
-  // Open the configuration file
-  FILE *file = fopen(filename, "r");
-
-  // Read each line from the file
-  char line[256];
-  while (fgets(line, sizeof(line), file))
-  {
-    // Check if this line is a comment or empty
-    if (line[0] == '#' || line[0] == '\n')
-      continue;
-
-    // Parse the line to get the option and value
-    char option[128], value[128];
-    if (sscanf(line, "%[^=]=%s", option, value) != 2)
-      continue;
-
-    // Set the value of the appropriate option in the config struct
-    if (strcmp(option, "dettach") == 0)
-    {
-      strncpy(config.option1, value, sizeof(config.option1));
-    }
-    else if (strcmp(option, "preview") == 0)
-    {
-      strncpy(config.option2, value, sizeof(config.option2));
-    }
-    else if (strcmp(option, "debug") == 0)
-    {
-      strncpy(config.option3, value, sizeof(config.option3));
-    }
-  }
-
-  // Close the configuration file
-  fclose(file);
-
-  // Return the configuration options
-  return config;
-}
-
-#endif
-```
-
-This is as far as I managed to get for now. I have a daily job and this
-prohibits me to work on these things full time. But I should probably get back
-and finish this. At least have a simple version working out, so I can start
-testing it on my machines. Fingers crossed. 🕵️‍♂️
-