Put the prompt 1/4 of the way down the screen instead of at the bottom. Above the prompt, we have a backlog of the commands we input. As we press up, it scrolls through the backlog, as normal.
Below the prompt, we see the output of the command.
I'd also like to see tab completion (and maybe some form of hinting) on programs, not just file paths.
>Put the prompt 1/4 of the way down the screen instead of at the bottom. Above the prompt, we have a backlog of the commands we input. As we press up, it scrolls through the backlog, as normal.
>Below the prompt, we see the output of the command.
That would be more fitting for a shell than for a terminal.
>I'd also like to see tab completion (and maybe some form of hinting) on programs, not just file paths.
bash already does this. zsh and at least one variant of ksh will do completion if you type the first letter of a command. I was surprised that tcsh doesn't.
There was a work by someone on github for building a new kind of terminal. It wasn't line-based, rather "context-based": the output of the command was written next to the input, but you could write commands in the same terminal next to each other. It was some amazing stuff, but I can't find it (I think the logo was an octopus or something like that, and the "backend" was emacs)
Interactive programs should also possible- think of a schematic editor or a figure editor running right on your terminal emulator.
The point of all this is to retain the context of whatever you're doing without having to switch windows. That and to advance the state of the art of console tools- certainly they have not changed in decades.