Not that I am at all anti-GUI. But there are and will ALWAYS be good reasons for a CLI. For instance, there are simple CLI tools which can be combined in any number of ways to find information and sort/cut/copy/mail/fold/spindle/mutilate/etc... which would take a long time to create a GUI to do. Oftentimes the knowledgeable mind wishes to do something not commonly done but very time-saving and helpful (eg. manipulate a listing of a domain). He can spend time thinking of an extensible design for a GUI (which would allow him to add on in the future as different needs arose), or he could understand the tools that already exist (building-block tools) and go to bash and type: nslookup ls amway.com > amway exit grep router amway
and have a listing of every listing in the amway.com network that has the work "router" in it. Now if he wanted to change the formatting or pipe it into some other program or file, it's a simple couple key-strokes. Not that you couldn't do ALL these things in a GUI. But in that 30 seconds it just took you to do all that, it would take at least a week to write some code to do the same thing in a GUI and debug and extend and create a system which would allow you to be creative and change the output and routing/mangling next week. It just doesn't make good sense. Because you may never do the same thing twice. In order to build a GUI tool which does all that you need, it would take you hundreds of times longer than just using the tools for the flexibility that they offer. On Mon, 04 Feb 2002 11:39:15 -0700 "Tyler Regas" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > At 10:04 AM 2/4/2002, you wrote: > >Bovine defacation! Doug Gwyn put it best when he said ``GUIs make > >simple things simple, and complex things impossible''. > > Doug Gwyn was incorrect. Good GUI design makes everything simple. Bad > GUI design makes doing anything unbearable. > > >I'm not saying that GUIs aren't useful for many things, and I certainly > >would find life a lot harder without them. On the other hand, there > >are many things I can do much more easily and quickly from the command > >line than I can poking through endless menus and screens to accomplish > >the same thing. It's a lot easier to copy all the text files in a > >directory to a floppy by typing ``cp *.txt /auto/floppy'' than it is to > >select them with a GUI, right-click copy, go find the floppy in another > >file manager, then right-click paste. How many times have you been > >selecting files from a dialog box with ctrl-leftclick, only to let up > >on the ctrl key, and loose all the ones you had selected? > > While I've never had to use two file managers to copy files to a floppy > I can certainly understand why you selected this task as one complicated > by a GUI. Of course, I'm talking about GUI design and not existing GUI > technology. One should be able to select a number of files and then > "send" them to floppy with a one click affair. A five file transfer > should take no more than six clicks, seven tops. I also commiserate with > you on the multiple select problem, but consider how much time it would > take to copy several files of varying extension types from different > directories to a floppy. > > >Some applications are by nature GUI. GUIs make the infrequently > >performed system administration jobs more convenient. GUIs make it > >extremely difficult if not impossible to automate jobs. > > I think you have this backwards. A CLI tool is fine for infrequent > management tasks. You can call it easily from a console. You can add it > to a script or automate it with cron or what have you. You can > concatenate it with other tools. OTOH, a GUI is well suited to frequent > tasks for reporting and administration. Being able to glance at an > activity monitor or click once to add a user is a time saver. > > >The best GUI administration tools are basically front ends for command > >line programs, and either display or log the commands they execute so > >that jobs that are done frequently can be repeated very quickly by > >putting those commands in a script. > > Here, I emphatically agree with you. And its really this that offers the > best tool for what the user prefers. Prefer the CLI, use it. Want a GUI, > here it is. Same tool, different interface. Then again, there are some > tools that are, as you've stated before, decidedly GUI oriented. A paint > or illustration tool ala GIMP is a good example. > > > --- > Tyler Regas > PHM Editor-in-Chief > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > www.pdahandyman.com > > > _______________________________________________ > Linux-users mailing list - http://linux.nf/mailman/listinfo/linux-users > Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Archives,and Digests are located at the > above URL. _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list - http://linux.nf/mailman/listinfo/linux-users Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Archives,and Digests are located at the above URL.
