Microsoft Is Making the Windows Command Line a Lot Better

'Over the last few years, Microsoft has been working to improve the Windows console. Console windows now maximize properly, for example. In the olden days, hitting maximize would make the window taller but not wider. Today, the action will fill the whole screen, just like any other window. Especially motivated by the Windows subsystem for Linux, the console in Windows 10 supports 16 million colors and VT escape sequences, enabling much richer console output than has traditionally been possible on Windows. Microsoft is working to build a better console for Windows, one that we hope will open the door to the same flexibility and capabilities that Unix users have enjoyed for more than 40 years. The APIs seem to be in the latest Windows 10 Insider builds, though documentation is a little scarce for now. The command-line team is publishing a series of blog posts describing the history of the Windows command-line, and how the operating system's console works. The big reveal of the new API is coming soon, and with this, Windows should finally be able to have reliable, effective tabbed consoles, with emoji support, rich Unicode, and all the other things that the Windows console doesn't do... yet.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/07/17/2028206 It's probably gonna get announced as "revolutionary"... Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 12:27:31 +1200, Peter Reutemann wrote:
It's probably gonna get announced as "revolutionary"...
What *would* be “revolutionary” would be decoupling the console window from the shell. Then you can run your choice of shells with your choice of terminal emulators -- just like Linux.

On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 12:27:31 +1200, Peter Reutemann quoted:
'Microsoft is working to build a better console for Windows, one that we hope will open the door to the same flexibility and capabilities that Unix users have enjoyed for more than 40 years. The APIs seem to be in the latest Windows 10 Insider builds...'
And there, in one word, you have the problem: “APIs”. The fact that, on Windows, PowerShell, CMD.EXE and the Linux layer all need special “APIs” just to bring up a terminal window. Does Bash (or any other shell) on Linux need special “APIs” to open a terminal window? No. They just read text from standard input, and write to standard output and standard error, just like any command-line program: fprintf(stdout, "Hello, world!\n"); It really is that simple. Original article: <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/microsoft-is-making-the-windows-command-line-a-lot-better/>
participants (2)
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro
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Peter Reutemann