[TUHS] Re: Where/when did TUIs come from

At Mon, 9 Jun 2025 10:57:05 -0700, Adam Koszek <adam(a)koszek.com> wrote: Subject: [TUHS] Where/when did TUIs come from By "TUI", I assume you mean that in the anachronistic sense going backwards from "GUI". (Technically command-line interfaces are "text UIs" too, but just using one line at a time!) So "TUI" is really "full-screen text-based user interface"? I would think any terminal "block oriented" terminal, including all the way back to the IBM 2260 (1964), were typically used to create "full-screen textual user interfaces", while character-oriented terminals, including printing terminals, were typically used to create command-line interfaces (at least until screen-oriented terminals supported faster baud rates). I would also think the first full-screen editors (on any system, including with any kind of character-oriented terminals) should arguably be described as "TUIs" (as opposed to line-oriented editors and other command-line interfaces). In the Unix world I think there were versions of full-screen editors well before "vi" was fully fledged. I used one called "fred -- the friendly editor", initially IIRC on a PDP 11/60 running 7th Edition Unix at the University of Calgary, though at the time it was contemporary with "vi" (1980). It was, I believe, basically also an adaptation of Unix "ed". It had a modeless "open mode" controlled by the cursor keys allow one to move about and change text at arbitrary locations on the screen, though it could also be used in a more line-oriented way like you would expect a full-screen "ed" to work -- in this mode it still maintained a full screen's worth of context and one could "page" up and down in the document being edited but typically one inserted/appended lines in a modal manner, or moved or deleted or ran other commands on a line or block of lines at a time. Unfortunately I've never seen or heard any more of "fred" since leaving UofC in the early 1980s. It may even have been a local name for some adaptation of another editor, perhaps even "em" itself. In second year I quickly quit using "fred" and switched to (Gosling) emacs (true full-time modeless operation, finally!) as soon as it was available on the new VAX 11/780 (then running 4BSD -- though in first year it initially ran 32V then 3BSD). -- Greg A. Woods <gwoods(a)acm.org> Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack <woods(a)robohack.ca> Planix, Inc. <woods(a)planix.com> Avoncote Farms <woods(a)avoncote.ca>