command line vs gui
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From: Tobias Brox on 17 Nov 2005 18:50 [Lee Sau Dan] > notbob> irreplaceable in certain applications. How can a keyboard > notbob> easily create a diagonal line? It can't. > It can! A command like: draw_line (0,0)-(20,10) draws a line inclined > at 30 degrees w.r.t. the x-axis. Much easier and _more precise_ than > having to aim at the exact coordinates with a mouse. Turtle graphics is also a nice one, like turtle.py or the old logos programming language. Drawings are made by commands; like, to draw a 6-fold star one could do things like: repeat 2: repeat 3: forward 160 right 120 degrees left 30 degrees pen up forward 80 pen down right 90 degrees (find one error) Now, using python and i.e. turtle.py almost anyone can start making complicated drawings and user-defined subroutines. For some applications the programmatic approach can work out just beutiful, regardless if it's using the turtle graphics or absolute position graphics. I.e. stars of different sizes, flowers, spirals - just some few lines of code, and that's it. However, in most contexts - if one is to make some drawings or diagram, _most people_ would do much better with a good drawing program using a mouse (or other pointing device). I have tried to make simple drawings using turtle graphics, even though I consider myself to be a command line guru and gui-basher, it was a really time-consuming effort compared to pointing and clicking with a mouse. Ok, I must admit, for me it's also time-consuming to make drawings in a drawing program - but not that extreme. As for exactness, the very most drawing programs supports "snap to grid", and that's usually sufficient for me (not that I make many drawings anyway). -- This signature has been virus scanned, and is probably safe to read Tobias Brox, 69?42'N, 18?57'E
From: Tobias Brox on 17 Nov 2005 19:03 [Lee Sau Dan] > It's not hard to come up with a front-end to 'find'. e.g. > Command: [find ] > Arg 1: [/home/foo ] > Arg 2: [-name ] > Arg 3: [*.txt ] > [Add More Args] [Go] > But I bet you'll prefer the CLI to such a GUI, won't you? I could do better than that. First of all, we already have simple command-line completion. It can also be extended to "smart" command-line completion, i.e. you write "find /home/foo -n<tab>" and the command line completer would suggest "-name". Secondly, a [gt]ui/cli-tool that are aware of find, would of course have find as a menu option, it would allow the user to chose what directories to search, and it would have a pull-down-menu of all the possible parameters to find, complete with help text and boxes for filling out arguments. This would help immensely for people who need to use find, but which does not remember the syntax/commands, and/or doesn't have the patience to RTFM. Now, what would be lost out is the more complex stuff - like, piping the output from find to another program (i.e. xargs), and building advanced expressions with operators: ( EXPR ) ! EXPR -not EXPR EXPR1 -a EXPR2 EXPR1 -and EXPR2 EXPR1 -o EXPR2 EXPR1 -or EXPR2 EXPR1 , EXPR2 A good [gt]ui would solve this by generating and showing the command line for the user and allowing the user to hand-edit it before execution - plus, showing the relevant man-pages at the right places. Piping could also be solved through a GUI, I think. But why bother, people who are smart enough to see the use of piping are usually also smart enough to get around in the CLI ;-) -- This signature has been virus scanned, and is probably safe to read Tobias Brox, 69?42'N, 18?57'E
From: Keith Keller on 17 Nov 2005 19:33 On 2005-11-18, Tobias Brox <tobias(a)stud.cs.uit.no> wrote: > > First of all, we already have simple command-line completion. It can > also be extended to "smart" command-line completion, i.e. you write > "find /home/foo -n<tab>" and the command line completer would suggest > "-name". zsh already supports option-completion. :) --keith -- kkeller-usenet(a)wombat.san-francisco.ca.us (try just my userid to email me) AOLSFAQ=http://wombat.san-francisco.ca.us/cgi-bin/fom see X- headers for PGP signature information
From: notbob on 17 Nov 2005 20:03 On 2005-11-17, Lee Sau Dan <danlee(a)informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote: > It can! A command like: draw_line (0,0)-(20,10) draws a line inclined > at 30 degrees w.r.t. the x-axis. Much easier and _more precise_ than > having to aim at the exact coordinates with a mouse. You are correct, of course, but very few programs don't have some sort of snap capability. I once used a early computer graphics program where all lines were done with coordinates. What a nightmare! This was made even worse by the fact each line's x,y, and z coord had it's own entry box in the gui and required hitting tab and arrow keys move from one to the other. Very tedious and slow. nb
From: Bradley K. Sherman on 17 Nov 2005 22:52
When Google buys Microsoft, the command line will have triumphed over the thin, thin candy shell of the GUI. --bks |