| Will Dyson on Thu, 26 Sep 2002 21:19:21 -0400 |
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gabriel rosenkoetter wrote: I happen to think that, for POSIX-ish OSes, a command line interface makes the most sense because all of the standard (that is, the ones they've all got) tools use that interface. Not even various GNU/Linux distribution's GUI configuration tools look the same, much less across OSes. But, despite small syntax differences[1], ifconfig(8) performs the same function everywhere, no searching for the network-configuration-widget in whatever graphical configurator you're using. Yeah, when I first moved from using a Mac (and started using various "traditional unix" utils under BeOS) I wondered why anyone would willingly go without GUI config utilities. Nowadays, I almost always prefer to edit config files directly. But a (well thought out) config util has much to recommend it if you aren't familiar with a program (such as not requireing the user to read a man page to learn the syntax of the config file). I wouldn't be caught dead configuring my servers through a GUI. But a mail client? Sure. Unfortunatly, designing any GUI interface so that it is helpful, rather than in your way, is quite hard to do. Just look at what Apple has done to the Finder in the process of re-writing it for OS X. And don't even talk to me about Konqeror or Nautilus. The BeOS's finder-clone (called Tracker) is one of the few things I still miss from my BeOS days, however. -- Will Dyson "Back off man, I'm a scientist!" -Dr. Peter Venkman _________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug
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