From: johnsd2@vccnw05.its.rpi.edu.its1 (Daniel Norman Johnson)
Subject: Re: CLI advantages (was Re: Macintosh bigot
Reply-To: johnsd2@vccnw05.its.rpi.edu.its1
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 12:36:11 GMT

In article oHcTVB1w165w@falcon.no, lfosdal@falcon.no (Lars Fosdal) writes:
>vlcek@mtl.mit.edu (Jim Vlcek) writes:
>
>> Sheesh, this is _still_ going on.
>
>Well, people don't stop discussing the weather, either :-)
>

Or this thread, apparently. :)

>[...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.

I would hardly call that "correctly"; I loathe nested dialogs. And I'm
not too fond of heirarchial menus. But who said everything had to go in
those? Drop the occasional control into your window for instance.

When commands are nested as you describe, you get mousingitis just
doing it once! :)

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

Oh gad, how cute... :/

>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.

Check.

>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.

Why? 40 commands isn't that many, in a good interface. You don't have
to keep your commands all in one place. Also, it may be possible to
consolidate commands and things like that. (depends on the app, of course)

I betcha you could find 40 distinct commands in the Finder if you were
sneaky about it and "unconsolidated" things like the Views menu and
the Find command, and threw in the control panels (Which are part of
the finder technically)

Of course, it doens't SEEM like that. Apple did a good enough user interface
job for that.

But perhaps you meant less elemental commands? (I was thining of things
as small as "add <x> to list views" or "lock file <x>" or "set window
color to <x>" or....

>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.

Check. New improved command line. What's this "prompter" thing exactly?

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

I presume loading the prices is uninteresting to this discussion.

>                                  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           -------------------------------------------|

Ah yes, command line interface at its best! :)

>The CLI prompter is intelligent enough to recognize missing or bad 
>parameters and will prompt you for the proper value.

Gotcha. That is nice.

>You still may go by menu, but for the experienced user, the CLI will
>be much faster

Why? Certainly it would not be for any operation they had not
memorized. Why would it be so for operations they had? All THAT
would mean is that they don't have to hit the manuals.

>  (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).

Sounds like a script to me. I'd rather have a somewhat friendlier way
to write one tho- those commands are rather cryptic.

>So, why not have the best of two worlds ?

I'm all for that, but I still don't like CLIs. My feeling is that the
"best" of the CLI worlds is CLI scripting, which I would certainly like.

But using a CLI as an interactive interface is a royal pain imho. I do not
see what is worthwhile about that.

>A GUI with the optional CLI... 

Never met a totally "optional" CLI that was included with the system
(which is what you mean, I think. Even the Mac has an "optional" CLI
if you DONT require this). Closest I've heard of is the NeXT CLI,
which you still must use every now and then. (that is what a NeXThead claimed
here a while back, anyway)

>(Well, a CLI in Windows' Paintbrush might be a bit farfetched... :-) )

Save you from "mousitis" tho.. :)

>
>> 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... :-/

Heh heh heh.

Definitely. :)

>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)

But no preferences?

How can you flame without any preferences? :(
---
			- Dan Johnson
And God said "Jeeze, this is dull"... and it *WAS* dull. Genesis 0:0

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