Windows Terminal Announcement

cageymaru

cageymaru

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Windows Terminal has been announced by Microsoft. It features a GPU accelerated DirectWrite/DirectX-based text rendering engine and will use the fonts from your PC. Microsoft also announced the release of new fonts for the Windows Terminal. Full customization over the look and control of the new Windows Terminal is available for users. Profiles can be created to save your favorite configurations. The open source Windows Terminal and Windows Console is available today on GitHub.

Multiple tabs
You’ve asked and we’ve listened! The most frequently requested feature for the Terminal is multiple tab support and we are SUPER excited to FINALLY be able to deliver this key feature. You will now be able to open any number of tabs, each connected to a command-line shell or app of your choice, e.g. Command Prompt, PowerShell, Ubuntu on WSL, a Raspberry Pi via SSH, etc.

 
The Windows Terminal uses a GPU accelerated DirectWrite/DirectX-based text rendering engine. This new text rendering engine will display text characters, glyphs, and symbols present within fonts on your PC, including CJK ideograms, emoji, powerline symbols, icons, programming ligatures, etc. This engine also renders text much faster than the previous Console’s GDI engine!

they day you advertize that you terminal program support emojies...

But multitab support command line is nice ima miss that in windows 7
 
They aren't worried about using "Terminal"? iirc it's ™
 
Unless I missed it, I see no precompiled executable on that Github page. So, it is like where if you have to ask how much it costs, you cannot afford it? Only if you have to ask were the executable is, this is not for you? ;)
 
ManofGod said:
Unless I missed it, I see no precompiled executable on that Github page. So, it is like where if you have to ask how much it costs, you cannot afford it? Only if you have to ask were the executable is, this is not for you? ;)
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I believe that you have to compile it yourself. Scroll through the info at the bottom of the GitHub page.
 
trying to build this as someone who never uses visual studio is a huge PITA
 
If it can't Landmark, don't waste my time.
SPEED20_screenshot.gif
 
ManofGod said:
Unless I missed it, I see no precompiled executable on that Github page. So, it is like where if you have to ask how much it costs, you cannot afford it? Only if you have to ask were the executable is, this is not for you? ;)
Click to expand...

Supposed to wind up the in the window$ store soon.
 
Why on earth would a text based terminal need GPU acceleration?

This makes absolutely no sense.
 
Rockenrooster said:
That's exactly what I was thinking......
Cool, but why???
Anything to make it more bloated I guess.
My guess is it'll be at least 100MB
Click to expand...

To render large outputs faster? Be able to copy strings longer than a few lines? Even CMDer will give me a notice if I try and paste text over a certain number of characters as it can be slow.
 
Looks nice but too much effort right now. Plus my business windows 10 isn't the right supported build.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Why on earth would a text based terminal need GPU acceleration?

This makes absolutely no sense.
Click to expand...

It makes A LOT of sense because fonts are basically vector graphics. You want to render lots of them, and be able to scale/transform them easily. AS you're well aware, I am sure, GPUs are perfectly suited for this type of thing.

We should've had unicode support 20 years ago.

Are you saying having a GPU accelerated browser makes absolutely no sense?
 
dgz said:
It makes A LOT of sense because fonts are basically vector graphics. You want to render lots of them, and be able to scale/transform them easily. AS you're well aware, I am sure, GPUs are perfectly suited for this type of thing.

We should've had unicode support 20 years ago.

Are you saying having a GPU accelerated browser makes absolutely no sense?
Click to expand...

No. But I am saying I use the terminal every single day on Linux. I doubt it is accelerated in any way, yet it never feels slow when scrolling.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
No. But I am saying I use the terminal every single day on Linux. I doubt it is accelerated in any way, yet it never feels slow when scrolling.
Click to expand...

Sure but a GPU is going to crunch the same stuff much faster so why not use it instead of wasting power/heat on the CPU? Besides, this development opens the door for all kinds of craziness in text. Eventually we're going to need the GPU acceleration. You may not like it but it's coming.
 
A terminal needing gpu accel isn't a good sign... what exactly is it doing that requires offloading to the graphics unit. its raster not vulkan... or have they rendered the characters as glyphs surface
 
dgz said:
Sure but a GPU is going to crunch the same stuff much faster so why not use it instead of wasting power/heat on the CPU? Besides, this development opens the door for all kinds of craziness in text. Eventually we're going to need the GPU acceleration. You may not like it but it's coming.
Click to expand...

I don't see the point.

The whole point of the terminal is that it is simple fixed width text that is clear at conveying the message.

This does not add any functionality, and just makes it less clear and more muddled at a glance.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I don't see the point.

The whole point of the terminal is that it is simple fixed width text that is clear at conveying the message.

This does not add any functionality, and just makes it less clear and more muddled at a glance.
Click to expand...

For you. It's nice to theme the console to help with output readability, as well as addons like posh-git to display your working branch and its current status. Anyone that stops by my desk (sys/linux admins and developers) asks about my custom CMDer console since it's much easier to read than a moonochrome text console.
 
The GPU accelerate I kind of get. I have no idea why it has emoji support and all I've seen so far in the way of insight is predictable, unfunny attempts at being clever.

I can't even conjure up a wild guess.
 
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ZeqOBpf6 said:
The GPU accelerate I kind of get. I have no idea why it has emoji support and all I've seen so far in the way of insight is predictable, unfunny attempts at being clever.

I can't even conjure up a wild guess.
Click to expand...

100% agree with this.... I saw the emoji 'feature' and had to facepalm. This isn't a chat application. Emojis have no place in a console.
 
Biznatch said:
For you. It's nice to theme the console to help with output readability, as well as addons like posh-git to display your working branch and its current status. Anyone that stops by my desk (sys/linux admins and developers) asks about my custom CMDer console since it's much easier to read than a moonochrome text console.
Click to expand...


Well, I haven't seen it yet, so I am going to reserve judgment, but historically speaking every single time Microsoft tries to improve something visually it just winds up being more muddled and difficult to quickly see and find what you need to see.

Color coding doesn't hurt, (and you don't need GPU acceleration for that) but other than that the best and clearest is always simple fixed with plain text. Any and all effects just tend to make things crazy, distracting and less clear.
 
dgz said:
It makes A LOT of sense because fonts are basically vector graphics. You want to render lots of them, and be able to scale/transform them easily. AS you're well aware, I am sure, GPUs are perfectly suited for this type of thing.
Click to expand...

Text rendering uses next to nothing CPU wise. It wouldn't even show up in task manager next to other idle tasks.

This just seems like over complicating things to me.
 
Last edited:
ZeqOBpf6 said:
The GPU accelerate I kind of get. I have no idea why it has emoji support and all I've seen so far in the way of insight is predictable, unfunny attempts at being clever.

I can't even conjure up a wild guess.
Click to expand...

Emoji means unicode support. It's a good thing. Emojis are just text. It's all vectors. Not having emojis would mean not having proper unicode support
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Text rendering uses next to nothing. CPU wise. It would even show up in task manager next to other idle tasks.

This just seems like overcomplicating things to me.
Click to expand...

Maybe it comes natural to the problem, I don't know. I am not saying that's the case but it's possible
 
cageymaru said:
Windows Terminal has been announced by Microsoft. It features a GPU accelerated DirectWrite/DirectX-based text rendering engine and will use the fonts from your PC. Microsoft also announced the release of new fonts for the Windows Terminal. Full customization over the look and control of the new Windows Terminal is available for users. Profiles can be created to save your favorite configurations. The open source Windows Terminal and Windows Console is available today on GitHub.

Multiple tabs
You’ve asked and we’ve listened! The most frequently requested feature for the Terminal is multiple tab support and we are SUPER excited to FINALLY be able to deliver this key feature. You will now be able to open any number of tabs, each connected to a command-line shell or app of your choice, e.g. Command Prompt, PowerShell, Ubuntu on WSL, a Raspberry Pi via SSH, etc.

Click to expand...

About fucking time...
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Why on earth would a text based terminal need GPU acceleration?

This makes absolutely no sense.
Click to expand...

I thought that very odd as well, but then again I could have sworn there were valid text based programs that if one puts the time into can absolutely be AAA class of current gen ( shit ton of time, likely need a team to pull it off)

text based does not mean it will not use GPU directly, thing mining programs, they are all very much text based, if you take the physical hardware out of the equation and ONLY issue commands to the "system" that is per need basis, I do not see how they cannot create or you create something with the "simple" text based or w/e
 
On my Mac workstations I have all my terminal windows at 80% opacity so I can see at a glance if processes going on in other terminal windows below the one I'm working on have finished yet. I'll hazard a guess that GPU acceleration will help out with this kind of screen rendering.
 
Guarana [BAWLS] said:
as a Geezer who remembers DOS on his 286 at home... There's an awful lot of 'Get off my lawn!' and 'Back in my day...' shit happening in this thread....

Things change, get the hell over it.
Click to expand...

I remember like it was yesterday...because it was. Been using a Linux terminal for 20 years on a daily basis. The buffer is huge. It can display UTF-8. It has tabs. Supports middle mouse button AND ctrl-c/v...2 copy buffers. And I can do all this running in a virtual machine that has 1 maybe 2GB or ram and maybe probably 64MB of video memory. And it's does all this gloriously.

We aren't saying command/terminal is old, don't bother. We are saying it's old, and outside of Windows its pretty damn well efficient and perfect already. It's a beautiful thing...outside of Windows. The UTF-8 thing alone blows my mind. Windows 10 cannot display Japanese characters in cmd.exe (not even using "chcp 65001" command).

What would have impressed me was if X11 was built-in and has hardware acceleration....that would actually be revolutionary.
 
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