Unix just provides no good way to write one that can be used remotely
replywell that's the issue, isn't it?
the graphics options that we have are slow and complex, and they don't solve the problems like a terminal and therefore the terminal persist.
Yes, and plan 9 solved this; you open /dev/draw and start drawing.
replyA network-transparent graphics protocol? Who would ever think of such a thing?
replythat's actually not what i am after. what i envision is a graphical terminal, that is a terminal that uses graphic elements to display the output.
replyconsider something like grep on multiple files. it should produce a list of lines found. the graphical terminal takes that list and displays it. it can distinguish the different components of that list, the filenames, the lines matched, the actual match, etc. because it can distinguish the elements, it can lay them out nicely. a column for the filenames, colors for the matched parts, counts, etc.
grep would not produce any graphics here, just semantic output that my imagined graphical terminal would be able to interpret and visualize.