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You Don't Need a GUI

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Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#161

Post by opan »

_abox wrote: post #106

I think this document is a bit too belligerent. "STOP DOING xxx". Really, users should be free to do as they wish. I prefer using console a lot (though I use GUI a lot too!). But I wouldn't force others to do so. Educating them how (if they're interested) is a great thing. Making it sound like they're doing it wrong is not. PS: One thing where a GUI really shines is picking a bunch of files from a folder and moving t…

I do enjoy ranger (TUI) for the reasons you mention, but I find something like pcmanfm feels less powerful, and harder to control. This isn't because pcmanfm is a GUI program, but rather the culture around GUI programs. If you want a good GUI, look at emacs. As good as the TUI version, but with support for images and more colors. It's possible, but rare. I think the devs for each type of program tend to differ in mindset.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#162

Post by zambal »

a1369209993 wrote: post #96
drivers99 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant like index.html And you’d get open, copy, rename, create symlink, delete, compress, etc.

That sounds like a GUI; how do I pipe [open, copy, rename, etc] into sed or awk? (Because the^Wa problem with GUIs is that the answer tends to be "Why would you want to do a wierd thing like that?".)

It's just postfix notation. I don't see why you shouldn't be able to do something like:

index.html open | sed

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#163

Post by inetknght »

karlicoss wrote: post #11

GUI is better for discoverability of the most common scenarios (I can right-click to see everything that can be done with the file, including some third party programs). But it's bad for composing programs and interoperability, often it's impossible or very hard to automate (how many people are doing UI testing? there is a good reason it's not many -- it completely sucks) TUI/console is very good for interoperability…

> GUI is better for discoverability of the most common scenarios (I can right-click to see everything that can be done with the file, including some third party programs).

No. One has to be trained to right-click. What about interfaces that don't have a right-click, such as a touch interface?

Not only that, but the right-click menu has to be programmed. A lot of designers want minimalistic interfaces and would remove anything that isn't used often. So your right-click menu won't have those features.

> TUI/console is very good for interoperability/automation/muscle memory, but doing one-off things is harder.

Are you kidding?! I've found that doing one-off things is massively easier and faster in a TUI than in a GUI!

> In comparison, I know that if I start going through GUI, eventually I'll eventually find the free disk space info.

I've found plenty of GUIs that simply don't have what I want. Or... maybe they do have what I want but I couldn't find it.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#164

Post by mdoms »

subsection1h wrote: post #95
macando wrote: post #58

Once learned the GUI actions are impossible to forget. Being away from the computer for two weeks will make you forget 80% of the CLI commands from the author's list. The reason is simple: the brain can associate the GUI actions to many concepts from the real world. CLI concepts exist on computers and nowhere else. That knowledge is too abstract and too expensive to be kept unused in our brain's cache non-stop.

> Being away from the computer for two weeks will make you forget 80% of the CLI commands from the author's list. Sweet Jesus, the GUI lovers in this discussion really need to learn how to use computers. I have a text file that includes several thousand commands that I have run during the past 20+ years. In one column there are the commands with placeholders, and in the other column there are descriptions of the comm…

> Sweet Jesus, the GUI lovers in this discussion really need to learn how to use computers

Do you have any idea how obnoxious this comment is? I would love to have a discussion with you when you're 38 years old. I think you'll be amazed at how even your big impressive brain degrades, especially in memory.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#165

Post by axelfreeman »

karlicoss wrote: post #11

GUI is better for discoverability of the most common scenarios (I can right-click to see everything that can be done with the file, including some third party programs). But it's bad for composing programs and interoperability, often it's impossible or very hard to automate (how many people are doing UI testing? there is a good reason it's not many -- it completely sucks) TUI/console is very good for interoperability…

I think this is because of the "default" behaviour pattern. You can rightclick or do a context click on the most systems. Even on smartphones you can hold your finger on the file to get a context menue. This is not the case for cli. There is not global pattern like "context file" or "options file" that works on every cli. There are not a lot of easy common patterns in the cli world. Even for autocomplete you have to change the default shell on the popular systems.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#166

Post by michrassena »

throwaway823882 wrote: post #20

Is this satire? Every single example shown is quicker and easier in a GUI. Shell scripting and pipes are the only times a command-line is better than a GUI.

I don't know if it's satire, but I can't take this article seriously. The command line, for me, isn't about doing things the hard way. Nor is is necessarily the easy way either. It's an alternate interface which has some strengths.

What is compelling about the command line is how it can be it's own ecosystem and it's possible to use most of the features of a computer within this constrained environment.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#167

Post by aidenn0 »

homarp wrote: post #45
koolba wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I don't remember the `df` command... what do I do apart from searching on the internet? You can do that locally on the command line too! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apropos_(Unix)

or man -k "disk space"

  disk space: nothing appropriate.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#168

Post by aidenn0 »

lupire wrote: post #39
gpanders wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undoing isn’t a feature of a GUI though, but rather running in a context that maintains history/state. There’s no reason a command line program couldn’t do something like this in theory.

It's been 50 years. Why doesn't bash in a friendly system like Ubuntu have undo for mv.

You can't undo a file-move in (most?) GUI file managers either.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#169

Post by avhon1 »

ttt0 wrote: post #101
unnouinceput wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quote: "..you want to do something complicated that a GUI program can't handle..." Name one thing that a GUI program can't handle, I dare you. Me, on the other hand, I can point you to a trillion dollar business that uses only GUI and not a single CLI, to say the least.

Bulk rename.

There are actually a couple of good GUI bulk file renamers. I'm fond of the one built into xfce's Thunar file manager [1], but there is also ReNamer [2] and Ant Renamer [3].

[1] https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/bulk-renamer/start

[2] http://www.den4b.com/products/renamer

[3] http://www.antp.be/software/renamer

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#170

Post by systems »

sbuttgereit wrote: post #24
karlicoss wrote: post #11

GUI is better for discoverability of the most common scenarios (I can right-click to see everything that can be done with the file, including some third party programs). But it's bad for composing programs and interoperability, often it's impossible or very hard to automate (how many people are doing UI testing? there is a good reason it's not many -- it completely sucks) TUI/console is very good for interoperability…

A fair part of what I do includes ERP implementation project work. Way back, when TUI/keyboard centric ERP system dominance was starting to give way to GUI/mouse centric ERP systems, I was working with one client where replacing a TUI with GUI based system. One measure we made during the project was the impact to new employee training time and we saw significant reductions in training time due to the sorts of discove…

what is your setup to save queries in file and run them, does psql support this model

i use ssms for mssql, and i have a large solution with multiple projects

i know datagrip can be used in the same way as ssms, but can you this be done using psql

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