- Console application
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- This article refers to applications with text input consoles. See console game for more information about applications that can run on video game consoles.
FreeDOS edit, a text editor.
Alpine, an e-mail client.
Irssi, an IRC client.A console application is a computer program designed to be used via a text-only computer interface, such as a text terminal, the command line interface of some operating systems (Unix, DOS, etc.) or the text-based interface included with most Graphical User Interface (GUI) operating systems, such as the Win32 console in Microsoft Windows, the Terminal in Mac OS X, and xterm in Unix. A user typically interacts with a console application using only a keyboard and display screen, as opposed to GUI applications, which normally require the use of a mouse or other pointing device. Many console applications such as command line interpreters are command line tools, but numerous Text User Interface (TUI) programs also exist.
As the speed and ease-of-use of GUI applications have improved over time, the use of console applications has greatly diminished, but not disappeared. Some users simply prefer console based applications, while some organizations still rely on existing console applications to handle key data processing tasks.
The generation of console applications is kept as a feature of modern programming environments such as Visual Studio and the .NET Framework on Microsoft Windows because it greatly simplifies the learning process of a new programming language by removing the complexity of a graphical user interface (see an example in the C Sharp article).
For data processing tasks and computer administration, these programming environments represent the next level of operating system or data processing control after scripting. If an application is only going to be run by the programmer himself and/or a few colleagues, there may be no need for a pretty graphical user interface, leaving the application leaner, faster and easier to maintain.
Console based applications
The following list contains a small selection of console based applications:
- Lynx — web browser
- Irssi — IRC client
- Alpine — e-mail client
- Mutt — e-mail client
- Midnight Commander — file manager
- nano — text editor
- Music on Console — audio player
- cmus — audio player
See also
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