Post #2948113
2026-02-17 20:31 UTC
I’d say vi is in a fuzzy grey area below a tui. It’s more than a cli but shares a lot with cli programs; it pretty much has its own command line built in. At the same time it has nothing like dialog box or menus like normal tui programs.
Replies (1)
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@Ferk@lemmy.ml 2026-02-17 21:23
Personally, I feel that if it uses control characters to update the screen in previous positions, altering the scroll buffer, moving beyond where the cursor is and redrawing the screen, then it's a TUI. CLI programs only output plain text in a stream, using just control characters for coloring and formatting, and if they do any re-drawing it's only for the current line (eg. progressbars and so). So.. even something like `less` is a TUI program.. but things like `more` or `sed` would be CLI programs.