Re: command line vs gui

news_at_absamail.co.za
Date: 11/24/05 

Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 10:41:26 -0600

Robert Heller wrote:
> Right. For some commands (such as find), there is no real chance of
> ANY viable 'graphical' interface.

Perhaps that's because 'find' is an unstructured mess ?
Menues and 'forms' are a disciplining method of imposing structure.

> And for others a CLI interface might
> make no sense. The only sort of 'best of both worlds' is a GUI desktop
> that includes an 'shell window' (xterm+shell).
>
> The only sort of 'unifying' interface is going to be an *intelligent*
> voice-recognition / natural-language type of interface, ala Star Trek.
>
That's the ultimate absurd garbage !.
Progress is acheived by disciplined structure, not reverting to ape
behaviour ! Mans 'highest' acheivments require methods that have
evolved over thousands of years.
You can't do eg. mathematics and 'lasting' music by sitting around the
camp-fire talking.

> One way of thinking about the differences between a GUI (aka
> 'point-and-click') and a CLI and how they relate to how effectively one
> can communicate with one's computer to get stuff done is to consider
> that a GUI interface is not really much different than a pre-lingual
> communication system. One can replace 'point-and-click' with
> 'point-and-grunt' (ala proto-humans) or 'point-and-scream' (ala
> infants). In all of these cases, the communication is limited to the
> choices at hand, literally (the finite and *limited* set of things
> available on the screen).

The measure of increased knowledge is usually the very reduction
of choices. At the extreme of ignorance and chaos there is no
classification ie. maximum entropy. As knowledge increases we
are able to classify [and build ontologies], and replace the mass
of 'GOTOs' by a few structured constructs. Being against "the finite
and *limited* set of" selections is promoting chaos/entropy.

> A CLI interface is not so limited. It has
> all of the advantages of a full blown language and can refer to things
> that are 'off screen' (things that are not visible).

If you prefer to keep the details in your mind, instead of following
a prompt path, do you also refuse to use a telephone directory ?
Remember that eg. a 3 level 5-way-branching menue gives you
125 selections.
=======

Richard Steiner wrote:
> I've seen both types of applications under different *nix environments
> as well. My current ISP provides a little point-and-shoot menu system
> called MSH for users as an optional initial shell on their Solaris shell
> server, which is very helpful for novice shell users, and mc (Midnight
> Commander) is relatively popular among Linux users (being a clone and
> functional superset of the old DOS-based Norton Commander filemanager).
>
Yes mc is a brilliant improvement of the original brilliant NC.
A killer-ap. productivety tool

> The idea of each is to suppliment the command line, not to replace it,
> and tools like mc do a very good job of coexisting with a standard
> shell while providing capabilities that are awkward if one is limited
> to only using standard shell scripts, aliases, etc.
> ...
> I generally create a sizable selection of shell scripts and aliases on
> any platform that I use (on the Unisys mainframe environment I work in,
> I have so many aliases that I had to create my own help system in order
> to keep them straight!), but there are still times when I find that a
> visual menu system or a filemanager-type application comes in handy.

That's because you've got better use for your mental capabilities, than
remembering arbitrary syntax.

== Chris Glur

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