Community ?

[rapha8l]

Hi,

Thanks for marcel, though I think it'd deserve some more acknoledgment
Maybe you should have an irc/matrix/discord/* chan somewhere ?
have a nice day

[geophile]

Thank you!

I am quite ancient (65), so while I know how to write software, I don't know how to create a community around it. That really wasn't a thing when I was younger.

I haven't created a discussion forum anywhere because marcel has no community that I am aware of. Or maybe I need to create the forum to build the community? I really don't know. Anyway, if you have suggestions on how to proceed, I would welcome them. Suppose I set up a discord channel. What next? How do I let people who might care know about it?

Seriously, I am completely ignorant on these issues.

[rapha8l]

Hi,
I'm not so young too, almost 50 :)
but well opening an irc chan or discord one, advertise it here, and maybe on other (You've been on the nu discord if i remember)
there is also the option of a reddit page
But the most simple is opening a chan somewhere, and let it live (or die) if you don't want to spend too much time on it.
but for people beginning using marcel, having somewhere to ask questions would be cool

[geophile]

I was on the nu discord briefly.

Hadn't considered reddit, but that's a good idea too. I will start setting up discord and reddit.

By the way, I've had very little feedback on marcel. So far, everything is based on my requirements from a system I worked on (resulting in https://github.com/osh), and then my thoughts on how to turn osh into more of a full-fledged shell. So I would love another point of view. Any comments on: what you like; what you dislike; what it needs -- that would be really helpful.

[rapha8l]

Great !
I have to try a bit more marcel to be honest, I wanted to use to get more into python too, but time is short :)
My opinion is to have a real nice user experience (like fish or nu, for instance) and maybe bring more interactive features.
But I'm biaised, I've always thought cli/tui have a real interesting future over gui for IHM (even FUI, futuristic user interfaces show more objects and text than GUI's)

[geophile]

Yeah, marcel is kind of useless without a little Python (at least for writing expressions).

Nice UI: Do you mean tabular output like nu? What fish features are tyou thinking of?

I agree, there is always a place for a CLI/TUI.

What is IHM?

[rapha8l]

IHM is human machine interface, the acronym is french sorry :)
fish has nice autocomplete, coloring and is easy to use by default
tabular output is an idea, i think there can be others
my idea is that something useful has te be pleasant to use and nice looking :)

[geophile]

Here's what marcel has:

• Autocomplete: Pretty similar to Linux shells, I think. Auto-complete for marcel commands, linux executables, filenames, flags.
• Coloring: The default config file does not have coloring. But it is easy to specify. Easier than bash anyway, where you have to know ASCII escape codes and shell extensions. Here is my config file (~/.marcel.py). All those COLOR_... entries, PROMPT and PROMPT_CONTINUATION specify colors, used in prompts and for colorizing command output.
  m.txt

[rapha8l]

thanks

[rapha8l]

oh, and if I can suggest, using $XDG_CONFIG_HOME for dotfiles would be better imho

[geophile]

Thank you, this is a good suggestion, and I will implement it.

I'm wondering how to handle the current config file, ~/.marcel.py. It is basically a config file, as it configures colors, and various resources (databases, clusters). But the configuration is specified as Python code, so it is executable.

The XDG spec says:

• Config files go to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, or $HOME/.config if not specified.

• User-specific executable files go to $HOME/.local/bin, and that this directory should be on PATH.

I.e., the purpose of .marcel.py is configuration, and the implementation is as an executable file. However, it is not an executable that is ever run directly, only by marcel, at startup.

So I think I would like to proceed as follows:

• Treat .marcel.py as a config file.

• In $XDG_CONFIG_HOME (or $HOME/.config), create a directory named marcel.

• In the marcel directory, place a file named startup.py. (I want the .py extension so that code editors can interpret the file properly.)

What are your thoughts on this proposal?

[rapha8l]

you can put all in ~/.config/marcel with something like rc.py or conf.py (or anything else) that could source subdirectories likes ~/.config/marcel/plugins, ~/.config/marcel/themes or anything that comes to your idea :)

[geophile]

Commit e47a40b moves the startup file to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/startup.py, or $HOME/.config/marcel/startup.py, as discussed above.

[rapha8l]

nice, thanks

[geophile]

A bit more work on this. The marcel history file (log of commands, much like .bash_history) is now kept in $XDG_DATA_HOME/marcel/history.

[rapha8l]

great !