The old Symbolics Genera had a "terminal" which was extremely interactive and object based, yet still worked much like a modern text only terminal. I still love working in that operating system. Pictures, fonts, diagrams, etc., were all supported well. I have not tried video nor seen examples of it but those computers were responsible for some CGI in movies in their time, so may have been supported.

I suggest Chrome or Firefox.

I find the conclusion of the article totally off the mark. The author seems to not understand that problems begins with multimedia support and other "gimmicky" stuff (as he puts it). You want video? Then use your terminal to launch a video player. A tiling manager is precisely perfect for this (I wonder why you switched to i3 if you don't know that, btw).

Oh, I know that. But what I'd really like is something akin to Jupyter, only for the shell. I think I'd like that, anyway.

For example, right now I can issue a shell command that lists cpu utilization by process (top). I can even have that command autorefresh, showing me changes in real time. But to do that it takes over the shell. It'd be neat to think about a shell where I could issue a top command, then command displays and exits, giving me a shell prompt again. But I have the option of asking the shell to update the old output every N seconds.

Yes, I could in i3 spawn a new shell and just keep top running in it. And maybe in the long run that's the better interface. But doing that screws up my carefully constructed window layout.

I guess what I'm saying is that we have two interface paradigms: the gui, and the command line. But interfaces like Jupyter and Mathematica show that there are middle grounds between those two extremes, and that middle ground is interesting.

Personally I use GNUScreen in addition to dwm, but mainly because I use a 15 years-old Celeron PC as a network console, which for some reason puts a one-two seconds tax on window creations. This setup is quite flexible, but you can get lost easily, in particular if in addition you use ctrl+Z carelessly.

An alternative is Emacs, which will give you shells and windows and splits and somewhat-interactive documents (org-mode) and has some support for images. If you're ready to sacrifice an hour per day to Emacs configuration for the next twelve years, it will do your biddings eventually...

> screws up my carefully constructed window layout.

To me this is off. With a tiling window manager I don't have to "carefully construct" a window layout. That's the window managers job!

There's nontrivial mental burden incurred every time the window manager changes where the windows are, at least for me.

How about instead of something merely like Jupyter you just use precisely Jupyter? I'm sure someone wrote a shell kernel, and if not, use ipython's shell magic.

That... could actually work. In fact there is a bash kernel for Jupyter. Not a lot of info about it on the github page, but it's there.

Then the issue becomes how well bash output takes advantage of Jupyter. Research forthcoming.

If you use mlterm (and supposedly xterm with the right compile flags) you can have inline pixelmaps via DEC -regis- sixel escapes.

Actually i think REGIS is for vector graphics, SIXEL (six pixels pr character) is the pixel graphics.

I seem to recall that at least one terminal browser can pull some tricks to insert images into the window in X as well.

Oops, you're right.

The browser you're thinking of is w3m.

mlterm also works great with non-monospaced fonts (but doesn't, to my knowledge, have a way to switch between fonts within terminal output, which seems to be what the OP wants).

I've always wondered what a tiling window manager provides over tmux. This isn't a rhetorical question, I've never used a tiling window manager.

Anyway, a separate space with full-screened iterm2 + tmux on macos is my preferred way to work. I can swipe left to check slack, browser and then swipe right to go back to my terminal.

A window manager manages windows. All of them. Tmux can't manage your PDF viewer or Firefox windows.

With i3, all windows benefit from the splitting/tiling behavior. Not just terminal windows.

You can get all of that with Electron-based terminals. Perhaps take a look at Hyper.

Ugh, I can't see any advantage that would justify my terminal emulator running on Electron.

I downloaded Hyper on your recommendation. I can't see how it supports inline multimedia. What am I missing?

It doesn't.

looks like you are ready for templeOS

Huh. Just went and read a review.

Not for everyday use, of course. Network connectivity (and application support) are nonstarters. But that shell interface does look <ahem> inspired.