Post #2499246

2026-05-12 20:13 UTC

So I’m designing a new #GUI toolkit with #REPL built-in, heavy on #UNIX philosophy and shell integration. Inspired by ed(1), of course. But I need to stress-test this design against possible use-cases for such a GUI. What are the small GUI apps you use daily or want to have that’d benefit from a really simple custom GUI you can hack up in an hour? So far I have: • Disk flashing utility (I keep forgetting the commands) • Shell • Music player Any other ideas? #theWorkshop

Replies (11)

@rimu@mastodon.nzoss.nz 2026-05-12 20:24

@aartaka@merveilles.town ffmpeg frontend / launcher

Open ##2768076
@zuggamasta@merveilles.town 2026-05-12 20:49

@aartaka@merveilles.town ffmpeg / Video conversion Imagemagick / Video conversion SoX / Audio conversion As in having another (more unified) way to interact with these softwares would be AMAZING

Open ##2768078
@angelwood@merveilles.town 2026-05-12 21:44

@aartaka@merveilles.town a nanochat client would be a great idea! https://soxfox.me/blog/nanochat/ https://git.phial.org/d6/nanochat CC: @d6@merveilles.town

Open ##2768079
@pat@patpatpat.xyz 2026-05-12 22:37

xrandr is always fiddly to remember the commands for :)

Open ##2768081
@pkw@snac.d34d.net 2026-05-12 23:14

Volume / Mixer is always a good one.

Open ##2768082
@d6@merveilles.town 2026-05-12 23:32

@aartaka@merveilles.town some other ideas: - calendar - weather/forecast - small games (hangman, blackjack) - fortune/tarot/etc.

Open ##2768083
@bouncepaw@merveilles.town 2026-05-13 02:46

@aartaka@merveilles.town yt-dlp for media preservation purposes

Open ##2768085
@bouncepaw@merveilles.town 2026-05-13 02:50

@aartaka@merveilles.town password manager? SSH manager (is that a thing?)? Monitor setup (layout, frequency, colour profiles)? Wi-fi and Bluetooth stuff? I'm so looking forward to whatever you're gonna cook, REPL GUIs are quite unexplored in areas other than LLM agents.

Open ##2768089
@khinsen@scholar.social 2026-05-13 05:50

@aartaka@merveilles.town In addition to all the suggestions already made, let me add the meta-suggestion: all the ideas that people will come up with once they have the possibility to do lightweight GUI apps. So whatever constraints you consider acceptable now, be prepared for people complaining about them in the near future.

Open ##2768091
@PaniczGodek@functional.cafe 2026-05-13 06:09

@aartaka@merveilles.town - a piano roll - something to plot XY charts on CSV and similar data

Open ##2768093
@dzwdz@tilde.zone 2026-05-14 17:23

@aartaka@merveilles.town irc client! maybe a password manager. file manager?

Open ##2768097