On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 07:25:49PM +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 20:41, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> > On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Vadim Vygonets wrote:
> >
> > > Quoth [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Tue, Mar 04, 2003:
> > > > You remind me what I knew about using Windows before I arrived to my
> > > > current workplace. Outlook is not just a mail client but a (convenient!
> > > > IMHO) address book + calendar + notes + mail organizer. You can say they
> > > > don't belong together but the fact is that the integration is VERY
> > > > convenient.
> > >
> > > Seen it. Not so convenient, and *really* doesn't belong
> > > together. Nor do I see the point of having a mailer inside your
> > > browser.
> >
> > This is a work around a *problem* of the system/UI.
> >
> > On my system I simply:
> >
> > cat file [|possible pipe] | {mail|mutt} whatever
> >
> > cat file [|possible pipe] | lpr
>
> And you think it's more convenient than pressing the "Print" button?
> I've been there and moved on.
>
> (BTW, "cat file | program" is the most naive beginner mistake, if it's
> only one file then you can run "program < file", RTFM :-).
To put what Tzafrir said in other words:
Say you have
prog1 < file1 | prog2 | prog3 ...
and you want to put something between file1 and prog1. You have to:
move to the beginning, insert 'prog0 < file1', move on, then delete
'< file1'. If 'prog0' and 'prog1' are long awk/sed programs, and the
whole thing is more than, say, 2 lines, it's much more difficult and
error-prone than to simply insert '| prog0' after the 'cat'.
Since you are a Unix oldtimer you already know that ...
The reason I decided to reply to an off-topic thread is to point those
interested to a very nice article/book called
"In the beginning was the command line" (search google, or take
<http://www.spack.org/words/commandline.html>. Note the first result
is not very well formatted). It's not only or mostly about the "command
line", but does talk about it and offers some interesting ideas. It's
more about higher-level sociology of OSes and such stuff.
Sadly, it's rather long, but worth it - even if nothing in it is new to
you technically, it's very well written and entertaining.
Didi
>
> >
> > Mozilla, Explorer, and such are limited. They can't easily pipe their
> > output. So they need to be bloated with all that functionality.
> >
> > They need all that functionality embedded inside them.
> >
>
> I disagree about your conclusion. Just like pipes can be used to move
> streams of bytes between programs (unidirectionally!) so can
> remote-procedure-calls be used to call "plug-ins" from "main" programs
> (bidirectionally!).
>
> I used, managed and programmed UNIX since 1986 until 2000. I still
> like the power of scripting and such. But when it gets down to reading,
> e.g., this very mailing list I find it much more convenient to click
> buttons and have the right viewer used automatically embedded in my mail
> window as well as the textual data in the right encoding than start
> typing " " or "^X" and "Enter" and god knows what in a limited 80x40
> text-only screen. I also like the ability to click a URL and have the
> browser popped-up instead of having to copy-paste the address.
>
> If MS are so wrong about their integration stuff (I'm not familiar with
> MS jargon, but I think it's about COM and its descendants) then how come
> GNOME and KDE invest so much in imitating this and Linux sites keep
> showing off screen shots of these environments? (one claim against them
> is that they stole good ideas and implemented them very badly, but still
> I find their interface today more convenient to some tasks than the
> ASCII-alone world of pipes and command line).
>
> This elitist view that "if it's good enough for grandma then it's not
> good enough for me" looks simply pathetic to me.
>
> Just today someone who works on Mac OS X told me she has a great user
> interface but underneath it she can always open a tcsh window and start
> typing away (she's has a 2nd degree in CS from HUJI so she feels
> comfortable with tcsh).
>
> UNIX command line tools are great for some jobs, but the computer world
> haven't frozen 30 years ago when these concepts where first invented.
>
> The UNIX command line interface was invented within the limitations of
> the hardware and software technologies of the time, these limitations
> have been lifted long ago. I don't see the point of making this
> interface sacred just because two decades ago only geeks could use it.
>
> > >
> > > > I think you are mixing Outlook Express with Outlook.
> > >
> > > Maybe.
> > >
> > > > > Why are people so obsessed with spreadsheets? What do you use
> > > > > them for?
> >
> > Spreadsheets allow you to deal with *lots* of data.
> >
> > Unix scripts tend to be line-oriented, or record-oriented.
>
>
>
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