command line vs gui
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From: Peter T. Breuer on 6 Dec 2005 12:48 In comp.os.linux.misc blmblm(a)myrealbox.com wrote: > Well, you have said: >>>>I was imagining that checking many checkboxes give you an OR. > and also >>>>> As I understand it, your GUI represents A & B & C & D with four >>>>> panels, >> >>>>Panels? checkboxes. One panel for all. > To me this second comment seems to indicate that you have checkboxes > representing things (filters) to be AND'd together. No it doesn't. I don't know why you think so! All the checkboxes appear on one panel, and checking multiple boxes means OR. You get AND by piping filters together (i.e., clicking "again"). > Do you mean to have two kinds of checkboxes, one for options (to be > OR'd together) and one for filters? I don't understand what you mean! >>You just choose "again". > So now we *might* be back to representing either expressions in the > equivalent of CNF, or the equivalent of DNF, or possibly one or the > other. I don't know what you mean. One does no "representing"! I think the problem is what I fingered below ... [snip] >>I don't see the difficulty. What you say is required is not required. >>Your argument seems to boil down to "english is difficult for most >>people to speak because one has to translate from the chinese into >>english and most people can't do that". No - english is not difficult. >>One just "thinks in english", not in chinese. > If one is a native Chinese speaker who is attempting, as an adult, to > learn English, English is difficult. Then stop doing that - people don't have any problem speaking english, or in clicking checkboxes. That you want to first express your problem in chinese (arbitrarily nested symbolic logic) and then translate into english (clicking) doesn't make the objective difficult - it just means you should "stop doing it that way" and think in english ("clicking") instead. > "So what?" Well, I would claim that if one is fluent with the CLI for > find, or with Boolean expressions in general, it will be difficult to > express one's meaning with the GUI .... No language is any different to any other in terms of difficulty. You should stop making an issue out of translation and instead concentrate on whether or not it is easy to use, and such. > I'm not going to say "the GUI > you describe", because I'm fairly sure I don't understand your meaning. > Perhaps "the GUI I think you're describing" would be more accurate. Peter
From: blmblm on 6 Dec 2005 12:52 In article <niog63-0on.ln1(a)news.it.uc3m.es>, Peter T. Breuer <ptb(a)oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote: >In comp.os.linux.misc blmblm(a)myrealbox.com wrote: >> In article <0teg63-kas.ln1(a)news.it.uc3m.es>, >> Peter T. Breuer <ptb(a)oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote: >>>In comp.os.linux.misc blmblm(a)myrealbox.com wrote: [ snip ] >>>> How do I enter something that gives the functionality of >>>> "(A and B) or C"? >>> >>>Chose A, C checkboxes. Click "again". Chose B, C checkboxes. Click >>>"finish" ("search", whatever). > >> Doesn't this require me to know that "(A and B) or C" can be >> expressed "(A or C) and (B or C)"? not necessarily in that notation, >> but the idea? > >No. All right, let me try in English, no Boolean algebra allowed: Suppose I want to find all the .bak files (criterion A) modified in the last 24 hours (criterion B), plus all the .tmp files (criterion C). I think what you're telling me is that I need to first click "name matches .bak" (checkbox A) and "name matches .tmp" (checkbox C), then "again", then "modified in the last 24 hours" (checkbox B) and "name matches .tmp" (checkbox C), then "finish". I cannot imagine how that would be obvious to anyone not able to write and transform the Boolean expression. >> But haven't you been arguing all along that your proposed GUI doesn't >> restrict the power of "find"? > >It doesn't. You know that. Well, no. Maybe it seems to you that I'm arguing for the fun of "hearing" myself "talk", and maybe that's part of it, but I really do not understand what you're getting at. > >>>> even through the "advanced" page. How do I ask for all pages that meet >>>> the following?: >>> >>>> ("contains foo and contains bar") or ("contains qwerty") >>> >>>To do an OR, you have to do two searches, and concat the resluts. > >> Exactly. No way to do it with a single search. > >So what? Using two google searches underneath is mere implementation! >Leave that sort of thing up to the implementation. My point is that Google's interface restricts what you can search for. Yes, I can do two searches, but how do I combine the results? Concatenate? but I claim I would want to merge them based on ranking, not simply concatenate. Of course one can imagine an interface layered on top of Google that provides this functionality. But it's not Google's interface. > >> So Google's interface >> understands only a subset of Boolean expressions. > >As far as I know. > >> (I'm not saying that >> was the wrong choice for them to make. But if I didn't know better, >> I would interpret your comment that it "understands AND and stuff" to >> mean that it understands Boolean expressions, which -- no, only some >> of them.) > >It understands quite a few things. You can look at their help page to >see what. It just doesn't understand some things that would be nice for >me (like "date"), so one has to build that functionality on on top using >a web interface. > -- | B. L. Massingill | ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.
From: Peter T. Breuer on 6 Dec 2005 13:07 In comp.os.linux.misc blmblm(a)myrealbox.com wrote: > All right, let me try in English, no Boolean algebra allowed: > Suppose I want to find all the .bak files (criterion A) modified in > the last 24 hours (criterion B), plus all the .tmp files (criterion C). > I think what you're telling me is that I need to first click "name > matches .bak" (checkbox A) and "name matches .tmp" (checkbox C), > then "again", then "modified in the last 24 hours" (checkbox B) and > "name matches .tmp" (checkbox C), then "finish". > I cannot imagine how that would be obvious to anyone not able to > write and transform the Boolean expression. :-). reading the descriptin, it sounds perfectly natural to me! One mistake is in thinking that somebody not familiar with Boole would even know what "OR" means (exclusive? Why can't you get it OR grok it?). > My point is that Google's interface restricts what you can search for. > Yes, I can do two searches, but how do I combine the results? You use something other than google. What is the point of this argument? Where is it going? > Concatenate? but I claim I would want to merge them based on ranking, > not simply concatenate. I think I recall google rankings can be got with the [info:] predicate, but don't quote me on that. > Of course one can imagine an interface layered on top of Google that > provides this functionality. But it's not Google's interface. Shrug. Peter
From: Peter T. Breuer on 6 Dec 2005 13:14 In comp.os.linux.misc Peter T. Breuer <ptb(a)oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote: > In comp.os.linux.misc blmblm(a)myrealbox.com wrote: >> All right, let me try in English, no Boolean algebra allowed: >> Suppose I want to find all the .bak files (criterion A) modified in >> the last 24 hours (criterion B), plus all the .tmp files (criterion C). >> I think what you're telling me is that I need to first click "name >> matches .bak" (checkbox A) and "name matches .tmp" (checkbox C), >> then "again", then "modified in the last 24 hours" (checkbox B) and >> "name matches .tmp" (checkbox C), then "finish". >> I cannot imagine how that would be obvious to anyone not able to >> write and transform the Boolean expression. > :-). reading the descriptin, it sounds perfectly natural to me! I misread your description. There is no "again". You click the two checkboxes, then run the search. "again" brings up a new filter to pipe into (configured the same as the last to start with), which you don't need. Peter
From: Tobias Brox on 7 Dec 2005 00:28
[Lee Sau Dan] > >> Infinite is infinite. > Tobias> Eh, no? 0.3333.... is clearly an infinite decimal > Tobias> expansion, and 3/10+3/100+3/1000+... is clearly an > Tobias> infinite sum. Both can be written precisely and elegantly > Tobias> using the highly finite fraction 1/3. > Yeah, and you can write irrational numbers compactly, too. e.g. "e", > "sqrt(2)", "pi". There is a certain principial difference between rational and irrational numbers, but I see no principial difference between i.e. 1/5 and 1/3. It's not mathematical, but historical and cultural reasons why one of them can be written but the other one not in our most common number system. > >> Then, why haven't you done it? > Tobias> Because I have other things to devote my time to? > Since you claimed that the task is trivial, the burden of proof is on > you. :-) Designing such a GUI is trivial. Implementing it is lots of hard work. I'm not up for that task. -- This signature has been virus scanned, and is probably safe to read Tobias Brox, 69?42'N, 18?57'E |