Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!ptimtc!rdmei!icspub!youki From: youki@neptune.ics.osaka-u.ac.jp (Youki Kadobayashi) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: UI idea...comments, anyone? Message-ID: Date: 4 Jun 91 21:15:49 GMT References: <1991Jun3.035743.28221@math.ucla.edu> <1643@toaster.SFSU.EDU> <1991Jun3.210917.1157@math.ucla.edu> <1652@toaster.SFSU.EDU> Sender: news@icspub.ics.osaka-u.ac.jp Organization: Dept. of Info. and Comp. Sci., Osaka Univ., Japan Lines: 62 In article <1652@toaster.SFSU.EDU> eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) writes: > From: eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) > Newsgroups: comp.sys.next > Date: 4 Jun 91 08:24:08 GMT > References: <1991Jun3.035743.28221@math.ucla.edu> <1643@toaster.SFSU.EDU> <1991Jun3.210917.1157@math.ucla.edu> > Reply-To: eps@cs.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) > Organization: San Francisco State University > Lines: 16 > > I want to see how one does multiple "glob" expansions in a GUI. > > Or stuff like > find / -name .nfs\* -mtime +7 -exec rm -f {} \; -o -fstype nfs -prune Every tool has its own limitation; full-featured tools are likely to become complex and hard-to-use for average users. Suppose one created ambitious visual-oriented-shell which can replace /bin/tcsh or /bin/bash, performing administrative tasks with it would be much harder than doing same job with /bin/*sh. In some cases it's best to "ignore" or "don't deal with" such needs, e.g. globbing. Struggle to be complete will make the ambitious v-o-sh one of useless beasts. Resulting beast will require complex setting for even simple tasks. You can say default will help to eliminate complex setting. $_ and "guesses" in PERL might be good example. However, it won't apply to v-o-sh, since UNIX tools are usually dynamically combined and different options may be given each time it's invoked (or else, such commands can be reduced to a shell script). I'll choose to type commandlines in Terminal rather than reconnecting graphical command units. However, frequently-used simple commands can often be performed more easily by graphical user interface. Navigating over UNIX filesystem with File Viewer is much easier than repetition of "cd", "ls" and "more". The problem of File Viewer is that it doesn't support basic UNIX commands other than "cd", "ls", "open", "mv", "ln -s", "cp", "rm", while there are many commands which is as simple as those enumerated above. > I can use Command-arrows to cycle through windows but I have to > take my hand off the keyboard to select a window. Mice are great > for drawing pictures, but they just don't cut it for real work... > Most of what I do is text entry. I'm *very* happy that Edit > (and Mail) support emacs-style keyboard commands. When I'm using keyboard I don't want to use mouse, if possible. When I'm using mouse I don't want to use keyboard, if possible. That's why I wanted to write app like SystemWorks. When I'm using File Viewer, and if I wanted to print the document, I don't want to launch Terminal just to invoke "lpr VeryLongPathName". In such case I can drag the document onto "printer" icon, which is an "iconified script" provided by SystemWorks. -- Youki Kadobayashi Information Network Architecture Lab. Dept. of Info. and Comp. Sci, Osaka University, Japan