Open new terminal from script to get user input and use input in script

Question

Is it possible from a background shell script to open a new terminal (xterm, gnome-terminal, whatever), get some user input, close the newly opened terminal and use the data that was input?

Answer 1

Consider using something like zenity instead.

QUEST="$(zenity --entry --title="Answer these questions three" --text="What is your quest?")"

Answer 2

Here's how you could do that using xterm:

mkfifo answer.fifo
xterm -T window-title-string -n icon-string -e bash -c 'read -p "input-prompt: " answer; echo "$answer" > answer.fifo' &
answer=$(<answer.fifo)

See man xterm for more information on controlling the size and position of the window and the color and font of the text if you'd like the appearance to be other than the default.

Doing it with gnome-terminal would be similar, but with fewer options for initially controlling window size, position and color (you could use tput in the -e script that you send it, though).