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I repeatedly note that I continue to use terminal (text mode) applications rather than GUI (graphical) applications.

For example, I often use Midnight Commander (mc) instead of graphical file managers, man command instead of graphical replacements (coolman, gman), etc.

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Surely something is wrong with this! But only now I have realized what exactly is wrong:

I tend to use text mode (terminal) apps because I can run these inside the terminal (e.g. xterm, gnome-terminal) window, without opening a new window. This is the main reason why text mode apps are in some aspects more convenient than graphical ones.

The main reason why I do not want to use some otherwise convenient GUI X11 applications is that these unnecessarily open a new window.

It should be done something such that X11 applications (e.g. with a special command line option) could be runnable inside the terminal window.

Clearly the terminals (such as xterm and gnome-terminals need to be enhanced for this to become possible).

Also should be changed either (or both, I am yet unsure what exactly should be done as I have not yet thought much about this, leave your comments and ideas):

• X windows managers;
• Xlib;
• applications toolkits (Gnome, KDE, etc.);
• (optionally) applications themselves.

An important thing here is that it should be possible to run an app in a little part of the terminal window, and that

Applications should (probably optionally) remain on the screen (in the terminal window) after these are finished and be scrollable just like text in the terminal.

This would make them convenient similarly to text mode utilities.

Yes, this should be done even if would require major changes in X11. At very least Gnome should be rewritten to support this feature.

So we need to think and to develop a set of standards to do the thing sketched above.

Hm, well, maybe we should instead somehow in some way enhance windows managers?.. What could be done?