One final feature of Director which has proven quite useful to our staff is the capability to run multiple instances of the user interface from any internet location with telnet and Web access. Each copy of the interface shows the same buffer although different views can have the debugging messages hidden or revealed. Think of it as a chat room, where everybody can see what is going on at the same time. After appropriate authentication, it is even possible to send commands from the copies or broadcast messages to the other windows. A single threaded command line is not the easiest environment to parallelize actions.
Most users demand more than a command line to operate the system.
We were determined not to allow our software design to be driven by a choice of graphical interface. The graphical interface for the CFH12K uses the normal command set to trigger actions, and listens for feedback through a status database. This separation keeps DetCom simple, and also makes it easy to test the graphical interface separately. We just click on various buttons, checkboxes, and pulldown menus to verify that the appropriate commands are echoed. This approach has the added benefit of teaching a user the command syntax.