9 Jun
2025
9 Jun
'25
6:21 p.m.
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 at 14:14, Adam Koszek <adam(a)koszek.com> wrote:
Hi,
I got interested in UI design and often study some historical aspects of
it as I work on software. It’s hard not to notice how fast/usable Text User
Interfaces are—ncurses and its siblings are still alive and well. From the
ergonomy point of view, not needing a mouse in those interfaces if perfect.
Question: where did TUIs come from originally, and what were their
earliest instances?
Many pages state that Vi was the first, but I’ve been looking through some
old hardware photos, and things capable of more sophisticated interactions
existed before Vi:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pen
Some terminals with block display:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3270
^ ’71. Wiki says Vi showed up in ’76, but I suspect IBM mainframes may
have had TUIs before.
Question 2: were there any manuals talking about TUIs? I’m thinking some
of those spiffy IBM things mandating certain design.
Does this count? I was just looking at it the other day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Editing_System
I have a feeling we're going to get away from UNIX pretty quickly here.
-Henry