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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!rlgvax!cvl!umcp-cs!liz
From: liz@umcp-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng,net.nlang
Subject: Re: expert-friendly: are long names a waste of time?
Message-ID: <4187@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 2-Dec-83 13:56:48 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.4187
Posted: Fri Dec  2 13:56:48 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 4-Dec-83 06:17:52 EST
References: watmath.6206 <1003@utah-gr.UUCP>
Organization: Univ. of Maryland, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 27

What do you folks think of systems that use long names, but allow
you to type something like <space> or <esc> when you've typed enough
of the beginning?  When you type <space> and you haven't typed a
unique prefix, it fills in what it can and (maybe) rings a bell to
tell you there's more to type.  Such systems usually give you a
command to ask what all the possible commands are at any given time
allowing you to find out what your options are.

I haven't had an opportunity to use such systems much -- the two
I can think of right away are emacs when you're typing commands
out if full and RIG (Rochester Intelligent Gateway).  It seems to
me a nice compromise, but I've hardly used emacs (I prefer vi for
other reasons) and RIG has a relatively small command set -- just
used to connect you out to other machines.

I have used ncsh which fills in UNIX commands, but UNIX comands
are too short and it takes too long for them to fill out -- and
it doesn't know about aliases...  I do use ncsh to fill out file
names, and I like that feature immensely.

Comments?

				-Liz Allen
-- 
Univ of Maryland, College Park MD	
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