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Thanks! I didn't know about tee. My gripes were from working with something like this ( http://i.imgur.com/LnAvV.jpg ), and then trying to emulate that in CLI. (The picture shows a graph-based image processing system, Blender's compositing mode) --- Source: http://www.blender.org/typo3temp/pics/ca33eb4833.png
I am one of those people who thing that CLIs are not user friendly. The premise - giving a computer instructions via Natural Language (NL) - is very sound. However, the way CLI is done right now (from the ground up) - is broken. The most obvious example - why are CLIs ASCII-based? I want to pass around objects - "ls" should only give me just that, an array of objects (which can be serialized for output in any graphical way, including ASCII). There shouldn't be any ASCII flags or switches - those (if really needed) should be an array of objects as well. Another example, piping, something that UNIX proponents are quite proud of, is a good concept, but it isn't perfect. I can't even count the number of times I wanted to pipe an output of one program to multiple others, or pipe multiple programs into one. The list goes on and on.
CLI is the best tool that exists at the moment for a few things, but I definitely see how there could be a superior, semi-graphical, non-"scrolling-ASCII-buffer" alternative.
Note: I have tried Linux as my main OS for almost a year, I've done extensive dev under Linux, customized the hell out of my .profiles and *rcs, etc. Still, I see it as flawed. If someone comes up with a sane CLI, I'll be the first in line.
Hm, looks sweet! One gripe about super-realism - usually "fun" stems from unexpected game-play variations (and decreasing entropy). In Quake 3, it was the rocket jump. In sandbox games, it's, well, the sandbox. This is also why finding (physics) bugs is so fun. Here, however, I'm not sure if one will be able to do interesting things. Can you, for example, smash half the truck away and be left with a "bike"? Just random destruction seems like it will get old fast.
Your piece of paper example caught me a bit off guard. It sounds pretty similar to a quine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing) ). I think that the same thing is possible with a demo - write the code to render a piece of paper from an array of letters, and put that part of the source code into the array.
This got me thinking on the topic of custom UI elements. The problem with those elements is that the programmer ends up rewriting the component, hoping that every little detail matches. I'm not sure about JS, but in some other languages you can make a new element inherit from the UI element class, and then modify its graphics - which effectively solves this problem. With all its flaws, if I recall correctly Flash let you do this - is there a way to do the same thing with JS?