Moreover, I'll appeal to authority and point out that Ratatui's motto is "Cook up delicious terminal user interfaces" (https://ratatui.rs).
replyDoesn't make it in any form a valid argument for Terminal instead of Text.
reply> character placement and border special characters
replyThese characters _are_ text though. They can be copy pasted like text, I can use them in my text editor, you can stick em in a string.
A REPL like bash already is not a pure text stream, since readline is used. Zsh, even less so.
replyBut they are just convenience features, not in my opinion the defining property. They basically work just the same without them.
replyTry running plain sh / ash interactively without readline, and notice how much pain it is.
replyBut I agree that having multiple windows, etc is a whole new step; it's just a limited GUI accessible easily via SSH. Could involve sixel graphics as well.