On Fri, Mar 13, 2020 at 03:05:41PM +0200, Ciprian Dorin Craciun wrote: > On Fri, Mar 13, 2020 at 10:53 AM Tobias Bengfort > <tobias.bengf...@posteo.de> wrote: > > I am surely not the first to come up with this[1], but I think many X > > tools could be replaced by TUIs running in st. Think about this quick > > example (dmenu replacement): > > > I myself pondered the same thing some while ago, however I didn't > proceed onto experimentation, mainly because I use `rofi` which (like > `dmenu`) has some other advantages that `st` doesn't like for example > window placement relative to currently active monitor, etc. > > However another disadvantage of `st` + `fzf` as a replacement for > `dmenu` / `rofi` / etc. is perhaps performance. > > For example I've tested the following (`heredoc` is part of the > `execline` suite, it is used as a `bash` replacement in your snippet, > and I use it both for `dmenu` and `rofi` in order to keep the > comparison fair): > > ```` > time st heredoc 0 $'a\nb\nc\n' fzf > time heredoc 0 $'a\nb\nc\n' dmenu -l 10 > time heredoc 0 $'a\nb\nc\n' rofi -dmenu > ```` > > And the following is the `user` and `sys` timing for these: > * for `dmenu` around 20ms + 5ms; > * for `rofi` around 35ms + 10ms; > * for `st` + `fzf` around 50ms + 20ms; > > Although even `st` + `fzf` feels snappy enough, I did feel some lag > compared to the other. > > > > > > The interesting thing about this is that you replace all the complexity > > of X (e.g. font rendering) with all the complexities of the terminal > > (e.g. ANSI escape codes). > > > I don't think this would be a major issue. In fact I think more > simple applications might sprout that would reuse `st` as a "display > server". > > > > > > I believe there could be changes to st that would make this kind of > > usage simpler, e.g. an option for full-width or to automatically attach > > stdin/stdout to the command (fzf in this case). > > > Yup. As mentioned earlier, `rofi` and `dmenu` have some advantages in > the window placement area that are essential. > > However I believe this would quickly become out-of-scope from `st`... > > Ciprian.
Interesting for you to mention fzf. I'd like to suggest that you look into the following patch for dmenu: http://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/patches/fuzzymatch/ If it would avoid users having to search out long-winded solutions to a simple issue, then I'd fully support merging it into the main dmenu source. -- Hayden
