Earlier quoted context omitted.
For those looking for a keyboard-driven browser, try http://conkeror.org/
or http://uzbl.org
The Command Line Challenge.
31–40 of 45 posts
Re: The Command Line Challenge.
#32I use a lot of command line tools these days, but I always use a web browser for browsing the web and a proper music player too. I don't think "going cold turkey" from the GUI is really a good idea. Both have their place.
proper music player
I can understand the browser - I use a graphical one too - but except for CD covers there's really no content a music player needs images for.
Ncmpcpp has a clear, nice interface with features like automated lyrics downloading, database management, tags editor, playlists, etc. And the advantage is that since it's only an MPD frontend, you can still use mpc to script stuff.
Re: The Command Line Challenge.
#33I upvoted this because it links to a lot of useful-looking terminal programs that I didn't already know about.
Related, a great list of them: http://jaredandcoralee.com/CLIapps.html
Re: The Command Line Challenge.
#34Honestly, I'm going to fall back on right tool for the right task. I just happen to be able to get a lot done using a terminal. However, that does not mean I want to be doing something Excel-ish in anything but Excel.
Yes. But. The trick is knowing other tools in sufficient depth to know when Excel is an anti-pattern.
Which is hard, b/c it's so flexible that it gets adapted to a lot of stuff it really shouldn't be. A big chunk of Corporate America uses Excel the way our foreprogrammers used Perl or Bash, adapting it to all manner of tasks because it's what they know. I admire their resourcefulness (and scorn their IT environment for limiting their access to better tools) but that handiness leads them into solutions that are fragile, unmaintainable, uncheckable and unscaleable.
The step from Excel to broader, more flexible tools is the move away from graphically delineated relationships to logically stated relationships. It's a very hard step, and one most people won't make unless they force themselves through a period of clumsiness while they orient themselves to a new approach.
Exercises like the OP are a great way to do just that: "I'm going to force myself in this direction by setting some simple but arbitrary obstacle that will build capabilities I can use elsewhere." Doing so on tasks that are well understood may help even more -- "I know how I would do this in Excel, how do I do it in Python?" -- because your knowledge of the problem frees you to learn the new things about this new sort of solution.
The OP isn't saying the CLI is the right tool for everything, he's saying this is a way to build the understanding that lets you move to it freely when it is the right.
Re: The Command Line Challenge.
#35I do this. I live in the command line exclusively and have for over a decade, except for web browsing (Lynx is extremely useful though) with Firefox + pentadactyl, and PDF/image,video viewing/editing.
But then again I'm a little biased, since I work for a company that makes our own vi, perl, awk port of entire POSIX APIs for Windows and UNIX shells etc. And cross platform ALM suite of applications (Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, Windows, Mac OS X). I can't imagine being a developer and not being in the CLI 99% of the time.
Re: The Command Line Challenge.
#36I do this. I live in the command line exclusively and have for over a decade, except for web browsing (Lynx is extremely useful though) with Firefox + pentadactyl, and PDF/image,video viewing/editing. But then again I'm a little biased, since I work for a company that makes our own vi, perl, awk port of entire POSIX APIs for Windows and UNIX shells etc. And cross platform ALM suite of applications (Linux, Solaris, AI…
It's frustrating. I envy you.
Re: The Command Line Challenge.
#37> lynx has more options and is more powerful in general, but elinks has a better rendering and looks.
I've never understood why lynx gets so much more love and respect than elinks. Elinks has tabs, lynx doesn't. Elinks supports some EMCAscript, lynx does not. What are these special features that only lynx has?
Re: The Command Line Challenge.
#38My (unintentional) Command Line Challenge was trying to build Gentoo on a 100MHz laptop with no other computers around. That was about 2 days of compute work. At the time, it didn't compile reliably either, so emerge would crash 5-10 times while trying to get to Xorg. Learning to fix the problems, particularly via lynx, brought me up to speed more quickly than anything else. Something to be said for leaning by immers…
I agree with your general point, but configuring Xorg is a form of torture no man deserves to go through.
Re: The Command Line Challenge.
#39More like "the terminal challenge." Curses-based programs (like vim, mutt and lynx) still have graphical user interfaces, they just have really shitty graphics. (And that's not a criticism of those programs.) Try spending a week using just ed, mail, and curl. Those are actual command-line programs, not just terminal-based programs. The litmus test is whether they would work with a real paper teletype.
Actually, more and more of the text-mode / console browsers have graphical support. The real challenge these days is javascript. I'm not aware of a text-mode browser that interprets javascript. I'd also like to give a plug for w3m. It's far more user-friendly than lynx, and IMO more advanced than elinks.
elinks has a very basic JS interpreter. http://elinks.or.cz/documentation/manual.html#ecmascript
Re: The Command Line Challenge.
#40I do this. I live in the command line exclusively and have for over a decade, except for web browsing (Lynx is extremely useful though) with Firefox + pentadactyl, and PDF/image,video viewing/editing. But then again I'm a little biased, since I work for a company that makes our own vi, perl, awk port of entire POSIX APIs for Windows and UNIX shells etc. And cross platform ALM suite of applications (Linux, Solaris, AI…
Same here but not as much. I do all my work that way in FreeBSD but with another FreeBSD box sitting next to it running X for any graphical stuff I need to look at.