Re: Idea for Gnome shell app...

[Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow mit edu>]

> > I could simply type it in, select it in the terminal window, and drag it
> > to the terminal's toolbar.  It would then create a little icon for this
> > command on the toolbar.
>
> Very good idea.  And trivial to implement as well.
> 

I'm hesitant about the value of such a feature. Under a Gnome desktop,
shell users will most likely be experienced users, since the shell
will no longer be mandatory for common tasks. Experienced users
generally find it faster and easier to type than point and click (why
else would they like the shell?) so for this feature to be truly
useful, it must allow faster shortcuts than setting a one-character
alias in your shell.

I think it can do that by providing not only toolbar buttons, but
standard keyboard shortcuts for each (similar to the way the CDE
terminal program has F1-F8 buttons), and better yet, sensitivity to
the current foreground app in each terminal (so I could have different
shortcuts based on wether I am running bash or Mail or lynx). The
latter is probably non-trivial to implement, however. Then it would
provide an actual benefit to the typical shell user. Of course, it
should also be possible to customize the keyboard shortcuts and to
turn this toolbar thing off entirely since a lot of people don't like
their shell windows to have excess gadgets.

 - Maciej Stachowiak