This is an exploration of how classical TTY interfaces can be improved to reflect modern changes to our computing environments.
Computer technicians spend a lot of time on consoles. This includes hardware interfaces, server management but also more and more interaction with containers.
TTYs are as modern as they have every been, but very little effort has gone into upgrading their functionality.
This project proposes to add multiplexing to console interfaces, so we can keep streams separate until the places where they are rendered. There should be no problem running many processes over one interface and splitting them somewhere else.
For containers it is tremendously useful to export their programs' interfaces over more than a single thin TTY line, without having to add much complexity in the containers themselves; multiplexing is a simple ASCII discipline that delegates the actual rendering, session management and so on to the container's host.
We propse to enable remote control by having an extra
input stream stdctl for interactive commands. This may
be used to start, pause, resume, stop and perhaps kill a
program; it may also be considered for dynamic changes to
the configuration of a program.
We also propose structuring text by creating streams with a clear interpretation based on ASCII control codes that we currently don't use. A good example of this is an integration with SASL authentication, but much more could be possible, up to even structuring the entire interaction with a program.
A last thing proposed here, is to use SCTP as a carrier for consoles. Multiplexin works well over TCP, but it can be much simpler over SCTP. It's optional but highly recommended.