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Metaphors make the operating system (NewsForge)Metaphors make the operating system (NewsForge)Posted Apr 30, 2003 0:21 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722)In reply to: Metaphors make the operating system (NewsForge) by melauer Parent article: Metaphors make the operating system (NewsForge) What's wrong with a break from the "terminal" model? Most interactive programs don't follow it anyway, from "less" (which tends to not affect the scrollback, even) to "vi" (which has a command line at the bottom which is independant of the file and disappears when not in use), to "emacs" (which pops up and hides subwindows as needed), to "screen" (which does everything). Nobody uses dumb terminals any more, anyway, or they quickly find they can't use any editor or pager they recognize. Bash already uses a number of VT features under normal operation; being a bit more extensive and clean about it wouldn't hurt anything.
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Metaphors make the operating system (NewsForge) Posted Apr 30, 2003 18:30 UTC (Wed) by dcoolidge (guest, #1390) [Link] Where have you been since windows 3.1?The reason terminal models are bad is that there is too much for a simple user to learn. For the tech savy command line utils are very usefull but you have to remember all the commands for those command line utils. A normal user's willingness to learn stuff is minimal. GUI provides a hunt and peck approach. You don't have to remember all the commands you just have to remember where they were.
Metaphors make the operating system (NewsForge) Posted Apr 30, 2003 23:53 UTC (Wed) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] The reason terminal models are bad is that there is too much for a simple user to learn.So what!!!? Just because my neighbor doesn't know how to drive a manual transmission doesn't mean that I have to drive an automatic. Just because he doesn't have the physical coordination to ski doesn't mean that I'm going to give it up. Just because he doesn't appreciate jazz, should I stop listening to it too? So now CLIs are "bad" just because he doesn't understand them either? If we're going to reduce the meaning of "good" to mean the lowest common denominator of what people understand and appreciate, then maybe we should all give up on computer science and go to tractor pulls instead. [/rant]
Metaphors make the operating system (NewsForge) Posted May 1, 2003 23:27 UTC (Thu) by melauer (guest, #2438) [Link] > If we're going to reduce the meaning of "good" to mean the lowest common> denominator of what people understand and appreciate, then maybe we > should all give up on computer science and go to tractor pulls instead. That's not the definition of "good", but it may be the definition of "good UI design". :) We're really getting off-topic, though. I don't think that anyone argued that the command line has to be easier to use. That's what GUIs are for. The argument was that we could make it more _powerful_.
Metaphors make the operating system (NewsForge) Posted May 2, 2003 1:38 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] The reason current CLIs are hard is that the user lacks any guidance as to how to use them. But there's plenty of window space available, and plenty of processor power to figure out what would be helpful and use some window space to help. For that matter, just having the bottom two lines taken up with a summary of fileutils (like the Pine command summary) would make the shell really easy for users; much easier than hunting and pecking in a GUI.Actually, since Windows 3.1, I've been using Linux (with bash) almost exclusively, because I couldn't figure out Windows 95, let alone anything since. Why anyone thinks that "Alt-F s TAB u ENTER" (IIRC, which I probably don't; subscript in Word, important for writing CS problem sets) or the equivalent mouse clicking is an easy-to-remember command, I have no idea.
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