The main problem is that there aren't enough console applications for desktop use. Consider: DOS has dozens of word processors, and even some real office suites; Linux and BSD have none. Zero. Nada. Oh sure, lots of text editors, and half a dozen markup languages, but not one word processor. By definition, a word processor hides most of the formatting code, and represents it some other way. For example, we can show spacing pretty well in the console, but character attributes -- italic, bold, underline, etc. -- is usually displayed by a change of text color. Not WYSIWYG, but good enough. Open for Business is about helping businesses (and home users) migrate to Open Source. That means users, not coders, not mark-up artists. Why must we put all our efforts toward GUI applications? What about all those users who can't afford the latest and greatest hardware? Think of all those people in the non-industrial nations. Tell me what motivates you and I'll find a reason. How about those of us who actually like the console, and are quite interested in doing all our work there?
Recently I wrote a whiny blog entry for friend lamenting the lack of attention to console applications. Someone else took this as a challenge to see what life was like on the console. He has been without X for nearly two weeks. Since then, he's posted a couple of entries regarding the good and bad of it. For example, Elinks is a great advancement in bringing the best of both worlds. It emulates tables and frames on the console, and approximates the text and background colors of most webpages. However, my friend notes in his experiment even some console apps are really designed to run in X.
I am part of a handful of serious users hoping to see this turned
around. We would like to propose a console distro of Linux. Are there
any coders willing to take the challenge? So far, all we have is a
strong interest to see it through. I'd be quite willing to help with
documentation, and maybe find hosting for the project. Long term, we
would like to see a console office suite, with apps able to hand off to
each other tasks they don't do internally. For example, the browser
needs to open a mail application for mailto: links. If
someone can code one into a current browser, fine. None of this is new
territory; it just hasn't been done on Linux and Unix in recent
decades.
Any takers?
Ed Hurst is Associate Editor of Open for Business. Ed is also the Music Director for Grace Baptist Church of Kickapoo Creek, Texas. He loves computers, runs FreeBSD and GNU/Linux and reads all sorts of things. You can reach Ed at ehurst@ofb.biz.