From: lfosdal@falcon.no (Lars Fosdal)
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: CLI advantages (was Re: Macintosh bigot)
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 92 09:40:11 MET
Organization: Falcon Information Services AS, Oslo, Norway

vlcek@mtl.mit.edu (Jim Vlcek) writes:

> Sheesh, this is _still_ going on.

Well, people don't stop discussing the weather, either :-)


[...Intro deleted...]
 
> The notion that you can't combine a useful GUI and an effective CLI
> into the same system is nonsense, akin to maintaining that a car can't
> have both a powerful engine and effective brakes.  Someone here said
> that a GUI-only system makes easy things trivial and complex things
> impossible; well said.  Eventually, system designers will come around
> to providing both, as both are needed, 

I agree with Mr.Vlcek on this matter.  A GUI is practical and effective
when implemented correctly, but also give you the "overhead" of having
to traverse several menulevels and dialog boxes, unless you decided to
put every command in one menu (God forbid) or all input in a single 
dialog.  For singular options or commands, this is not a problem,
but if you need to issue several commands, you have to explore the menu
once for each of them, and you run the risk of getting "mouseingytis" in
you right elbow.

Here's an example on "Why GUI + CLI = Good 4 U":

I'm working on a financial tech.analysis tool under Windows, where the 
user may select from a wide range of tools.  He may want to view the 
historical price of IBM stocks, a 9-day moving average (MA) of that price
combined with an 18-day MA to reveal any short term trend changes, and 
may also want to see the traded volume in the same chart.  He also must
decide which time period he wants to examine.

When you have 40+ such commands, some of them with one or more parameters, 
that all may be combined, it's obvious that this will give you a hard time
searching the menus, even if the commands are grouped in logical groups.

The DOS version of this program was CLI driven, but only accepted one
command at a time.  Also, there was no menu system.
In the Windows version, we decided to keep the command line, but we
wanted to improve it... so you may now combine several commands and 
parameters on the same line.  The prompter pops up when you start typing
and it also gives you a history list, a command pick list, and help.

a typical command line would look like this: (prices are already loaded)

                                  start 911231 1d lc ma 9 ma 18 w 2 2 v
view from date until today -------^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ ^ ^
1-day history              --------------------|  |  |    |     |   | |
draw linechart             -----------------------|  |    |     |   | |
draw 9-day moving avg.     --------------------------|    |     |   | |
draw 18-day moving avg.    -------------------------------|     |   | |
Split chart in 2 sections  -------------------------------------|   | |
Switch to section 2        -----------------------------------------| |
draw volume bars           -------------------------------------------|

The CLI prompter is intelligent enough to recognize missing or bad 
parameters and will prompt you for the proper value.
You still may go by menu, but for the experienced user, the CLI will
be much faster  (of course, you may put your regular cmd's in a macro,
and you may also have a default set of cmd's that are applied 
automatically every time you load a new stock, bond or currency).

So, why not have the best of two worlds ? 
A GUI with the optional CLI... 
(Well, a CLI in Windows' Paintbrush might be a bit farfetched... :-) )


> but until that time I do fear that the uninformed are going to prevail 
> and banish CLIs for a time.

...And... also bicker over what GUI is the better... :-/
Personally, I'd use any GUI or CLI, as long as it gets the job done,
and as long as I don't have be "a-moused to death" :-) 
(Apologies to Mr.Roger Waters for abusing the title of his latest album)


> Jim Vlcek
> vlcek@epimbe.com

Lars F.

PS. Sorry about the length of this followup...

--
/ Mr.Lars Fosdal, Software Developer, Financial Analysis Systems  /
/ Falcon Information Services AS, Stranden 1, N-0250 Oslo, Norway /
/ E-mail:lfosdal@falcon.no  Tel:(47-2) 831310  Fax:(47-2) 831290  /
-- All opinions are personal and does not reflect company policy --
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy