burchard@math.utah.edu (Paul Burchard) (06/04/91)
In article <1643@toaster.SFSU.EDU> eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) writes: > I believe that any attempt to eliminate CLIs is barking up the > wrong tree. Often, a shell *is* the best tool for the job, and > there's a lot to be said for the UNIX "tools" philosophy--build > small modules that do one thing (or a few things) well, rather > than construct behemoth "integrated applications" with slick > GUI interfaces but limited capability. Eric, I absolutely agree---but proposing GUI enhancements has nothing to do with outlawing csh or forcing anything ``less functional'' on people. On the contrary, the idea is to make the GUI *more* functional, useful, and yes, tool-oriented. And, as Barry pointed out, better-integrated with the CLI overall (this was in essence the one real criticism BYTE leveled at NeXTstep in their big GUI report this month). On several people's suggestion I picked up Kadobayashi's SystemWorks app. I like it!---it has a *really cool* graphical UNIX pipeline editor and monitor. (It is very much in the prototype stages right now, though. I hope enthusiastic users will help Kadobayashi-san work out some of the rough spots in the UI.) SystemWorks has the potential to be more flexible than what I suggested, and is a good idea in any case. The main disadvantages of its approach relative to the drag-and-drop scheme I suggested would be the extra screen space used for monitoring the pipelines, and the lack of `generic functionality' (everything must be explicitly scripted in advance). Anyway, it sounds like this is something NeXT should be thinking about---I'll let them know people are interested.... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Burchard <burchard@math.utah.edu> ``I'm still learning how to count backwards from infinity...'' -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) (06/04/91)
I would just be happy with a version of Terminal that did correct VT-100/ANSI terminal emulation. Please don't dump more bells and whistles into it before having fundamental bugs repaired (like the scrolling bug you see in emacs). I want a terminal emulator that I can run the exact same shell in that I use on the other half-dozen UNIX platforms that I use. While these enhancement *sound* good, are they more *effective* and effiecient than just typing the equivelent stuff at the keyboard? Sure, I'm not talking about the "dumb-user" that want the whiz-bang point-and-click, snarf-and-barf (cut and paste) iconic user interface; I just want to get work done. I agree with EPS, the NeXT I have gets used as a compatible UNIX 4.3BSD platform first, and a whiz-bang GUI flavored interface second. It is didn't have a good base-level UNIX functionallity, it would just be another macintosh. louie