From: fj05+@andrew.cmu.edu (Faisal Nameer Jawdat)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: MACS COST TOO MUCH (NOT!)
Date: 9 Sep 92 14:06:47 GMT
Organization: Sophomore, Physics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman) writes:
a lot of stuff, some of which was dead center correct (copying large
numbers or files, etc.) some of which was off - rememberring the name
of a file versus finding it on a desktop - this was dicussed on the
NeXT groups a while back, and the point was made that apple's studies
were done on novices - macs are perfect for new users, but i know
where most of my apps are on unix and on the mac, and i use a lot of
them quite often, and to put 45 icons on the desktop makes things even
worse than they already are - on the other hand a path ability would
be perfect - but i test very high on quick associative recognition -
whereas most non hacker types don't test as high on similar tasks when
using computers because of negative blocking

pullright menus make things even worse - but that's an implementation
and not a philosophical question

however : here is where he gets to the point:
> 
> A simple example. A better case for CLIs might be made by looking at the
> power of the Unix shell -- which allows complex graphs of applications to
> be linked together. But the implication of this "piping" is that all data
> is represented by ASCII text files. Sadly, very little data is ASCII text
> in a graphical machine. So there's currently no equivalent for Unix pipes
> in a graphical environment.
> 
> The singular advantage CLIs might hold over GUIs is the ease of translation of
> steps into a canonical notation. A CLI script is merely the concatenation of
> several individual CLI commands. No equivalent yet exists for GUIs.
> 
> Were breaking ground here. AppleScript promises to erase some of this 
> "advantage". Frontier has already automated many of these things. Note that
> while Frontier sales are solid, they haven't exactly taken the market
> by storm.

this is  why i bought a mac instead of a 486 to run os/2 or unix
(maybe NT? - do i have to?) on - applescript may make up for the one
major thing both dos, unix, and os/2 have on it: batch files. - also
note that os/2 rexx lets you do apple eventish things...
but apple script still won't let me do something like:
finger -p fj05@andrew.cmu.edu &
which fingers me without showing my plan ( i can remember that very
quickly, but i think ahead of my typing, which is 52wpm counting
errors - it also lets me do something else while i wait for it to
load) - to finger from my mac i have to start the finger program, wait
for it to load, wait type in hostname, tab, type in userid, and then
i can go on to other things - this also involves a fair amount of
mousing around

the inability to pass data in and out of programs is one of the mac's
major shortcomings ( maybe i can have programs output their info in
discreet file packets, and just stack a whole bunch of drag and drop
icons on top of each other ? oh well...) but if programs support apple
events, then it should be trivial to have a script that opens a
program, sets all the parameters, runs a computation, then outputs to
a defined file, opens another app to look at said file - you could
even have the apple script open up a dialog box on startup to ask what
file you want final output to be called.

gui's are better than cli's because they offer better multitasking
capabilities - but they don't necessarily provide a faster operating
environment, and so far, have much more limited data manipulation
outside the scope of each individual program.

> Perhaps the answer lies in the users. Graphical interface users don't need
> scripting. At least, they don't need it very often. When they do, they 
> either pony up for it, or they make do with what they have.
> 
exactly - cli's are better for some, worse for others - faster for
some, slower for others
on unix systems, most of what is done is manipulation of data stored
as text, but usually representing more than straight text - the
interface is designed towards that goal
on macs, most of what is done is graphical in nature, and the
interface is designed for such work
i wouldn't run a spreadsheet on a unixbox (NeXT's excluded) and i
wouldn't do anything network oriented from a mac (per se - i'm using a
terminal emulator on my mac to type this, but i'm doing it from a unix
box)
gear the tool to the task, and don't say it's better for everything:
what's the best weapon?