Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!nic.MR.NET!thor.acc.stolaf.edu!agnes.acc.stolaf.edu!hopp From: hopp@agnes.acc.stolaf.edu (Eric D. Hopp) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Tcl - Tool command language Summary: Amen! Message-ID: <11665@thor.acc.stolaf.edu> Date: 10 Mar 90 01:40:36 GMT References: <5213@sugar.hackercorp.com> <5231@sugar.hackercorp.com> <48f6cbee.db93@edsel.engin.umich.edu> <5237@sugar.hackercorp.com> Sender: news@thor.acc.stolaf.edu Reply-To: hopp@agnes.stolaf.edu () Organization: St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN Lines: 39 In article <5237@sugar.hackercorp.com> peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes: >> (True, you won't need to >> worry about receiving and parsing RexxMsgs, but once you have the code to >> do this, it is fairly easy to drop into an application.) > >Yes, but with the code already written you can make sure that each program >supports a consistent syntax. This isn't such a big deal now, perhaps, but >look at all the UNIX commands that don't conform to any sane standard because >no standard argument parser existed. Amen! That is one thing that has really bugged me about UNIX. UNIX commands tend to use single character flags, which is fine, but they rarely have a consistent meaning between any two commands, which is really confusing. TAR comes to mind as one that I always have to read the man page before I use it. "r" is the flag for writing, and "t" for listing??? To paraphrase what Apple says about the Macintosh user interface, "All programs should interface with the user in similar, consistent manners, so that the users will know what to expect." The Amiga Intuition manual echos this, as have a lot of frustrated users I've known. I think it's an excellent rule of thumb; users will be able to learn your software that much more easily. This is especially useful to anyone who agrees with UNIX's philosophy of having many small tools, each doing it's one thing and doing it well, which can be glued at a whim into larger, more useful applications. Pipes are not that great, but from what I hear ARexx comes much closer. Consistent interfaces (via TCL or another agent) will make life easier for everyone, and will make ARexx that much more popular. Peter da Silva's suggestion that programs with ARexx ports each support a consistant syntax is right on! -eric hopp hopp@stolaf.edu