On 6 July 2010 18:19, Ryan McCoskrie <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, 2010-07-06 at 14:39 +1200, Ryan McCoskrie wrote: >> > Knowing a handful of extremely visual thinkers who dread the command >> > line I have been thinking over the possibility of an application that >> > uses a drag and drop interface to visually represent the concepts of >> > piping and redirecting. At the moment I'm just in the day dream stage of >> > development but I'm happy to start implementing if someone else is. >> > >> > Anyway, sorry if this is a considered a spam but I need to some how ask a >> > largish number of people if I would be wasting my time on if I tried >> > writing it. > > On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:41:24 you wrote: >> I think it's a good idea. >> >> Are you thinking of it as an educational tool, or something more like a >> shell script generator from a GUI? > > A script generator intended mainly for one liners. > >> I had a brief look around freshmeat.net and didn't see anything like >> this. It may be that given the familiarity with the use of the command >> line by Linux user, such a tool is not needed. Or it may be that nobody >> thought of it before. >> > I have had this idea in the back of my mind for a couple of years as > something that could be done. The reason why I have bought it up now is > because I've noticed that Unix has a massive bias against people with > weak language skills.
Indeed it does, but would it not be a better idea to create a program which helped people improve their language and reeading skills, instead of creating a program which only made the unix command line environment available to the linguistically challenged. A much better use of the letters I and E - Illiteracy Exterminator than the more usual one. >> I have to say I've seen and worked with plenty of graphical tools to >> generate process flow and data flow from basic elements, with or without >> a target or specific language to generate the task in, but all had a >> specific purpose. Never seen something so close to the operating system >> as to use command line components. >> > Basically what I want to be able to do with it is reply to people saying > "Linux is all unintuitive command line stuff from the 70's ", with "Look! > A modern graphical command line!". i.e. A visual shell? >> It may be that you have uncovered something here. >> > In a way I am hoping not. I'm scared of having to follow this up with a > stable, maintainable implementation. You might care to look at:- http://www.squeakland.org/ http://www.squeak.org/ http://scratch.mit.edu/ for ideas. > We'd probably have to have a set of categorised tables with all of the common > commands in there and a method for adding more. > Also a dialogue for arguments and lots of documentation would be required. Remembering your target audience, you'll have to produce a visual show instead of the more normal printed documentation. http://www.debugmode.com/wink/ Best of luck. -- Sincerely etc. Christopher Sawtell
