Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!tekgen!tekigm2!phils
From: phils@tekigm2.TEK.COM (Philip E Staub)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: aliases and RUN
Message-ID: <3792@tekigm2.TEK.COM>
Date: 12 Nov 88 21:22:17 GMT
References: <5230@louie.udel.EDU> <483@boing.UUCP> <2975@sugar.uu.net>
Reply-To: phils@tekigm2.TEK.COM (Philip E Staub)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.
Lines: 76

In article <2975@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <483@boing.UUCP>, dale@boing.UUCP (Dale Luck) writes:
> [Rewrite the CLI...]
>
>I'd say... dump the CLI completely. Switch to a workbench environment.
>
Why?

I hope you're kidding about this one. One reason I bought an Amiga instead
of a Mac is that with the Amiga the icon oriented user interface is
optional for those applications where it is appropriate, while on the Mac it 
is not. 

>Now, you can still have shells and command line interpreters, but make them
>spawn programs in a workbench environment.
So now you have the overhead of Workbench even when all you wanted was 
a CLI to begin with. I suppose you could make the same statement about
Workbench having to deal with CLI's overhead, but somehow I don't think
thats quite the same story.

>
...
>New programs would still work correctly from the WB, since wa_Lock is a
>reasonable definition of the current directory and wa_Name is the command
>name when run from that directory. If sm_NumArgs is 1, then you can use
>the command line (feed it to existing _main()). If it's >1, then you know
>you're in a workbench-only environment and you parse sm_Arglist normally.
>
One of my biggest beefs about the WB environment is that it is too difficult 
to change options. In my book, the inability to pass switches conveniently 
to a program (or perhaps more pointedly, to *change* the switches you pass
to a program) negates the benefits of the nice icon oriented environment. 
Having to call up a utility to alter the arguments you pass doesn't cut it.

(Of course *the* biggest beef is the '.info' files).

>
>Existing WB programs can still be executed by just typing in their name. The
>wa_Lock will be wrong, but since wa_Name is a full path name they'll still
>be able to open their .info file.
>
>Existing CLI-only programs will crash. This is the biggy. Anyone have any
>ideas?
You bet its the biggy. 

>
>There's no easy way to pass stdin, stdout, stderr, and stdcmd. Anyone have
>any ideas? Without breaking too many programs, please...
>
>Maybe make sm_NumArgs==0 a special case indicating that sm_ArgList is an a
>new format (current directory, standard locks, argv...?)?
>
>What are the advantages? The big one, of course, is we can kiss struct
>CommandLineInterface goodbye.
>-- 
>		    Peter da Silva  `-_-'  peter@sugar.uu.net
>		     Have you hugged  U  your wolf today?
>
>	      Disclaimer: My typos are my own damn business.

I guess my feeling is that when you build layered software, you start with
the primitive layers and build higher levels of capability upon it. Not
start with a high level capability and implement access to the primitive
regions of the machine with kludges. Maybe I misunderstood your intent here,
but this is exactly what I feel you would be doing by making CLI run under
Workbench, rather than the other way around.

Am I just dense, or what?

Phil

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Staub        
Tektronix, Inc., Vancouver, Washington 98668
phils@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM