Re: A random topic for discussion -- free software tackles GUI automation?

[Russell Nelson <nelson-gnome crynwr com>]

Matthew Hiller writes:
 > 	Oftentimes, free software will get developed when people have an
 > itch to scratch. This is what I've been wondering about a lot: is the itch
 > for automated GUI testing programs strong enough that a free one is likely
 > to be developed?

I'm working on a white paper on the topic, because it keeps coming up
again and again.  The paper will be entitled "Recollection vs
Recognition".  Basically, what you have with the Unix command line is
a recollection interface.  You have to remember everything, and
there's very little prompting available.  A GUI works exactly the
opposite way -- you can recognize everything you want to do, but you
also *must* recognize everything.  God help you if you're blind, or
type faster than you mouse.

The challenge is to make a GUI which can work solely from the
keyboard.  Once you can do that, an automated test program is just a
matter of generating sequences of keystrokes.

-- 
-russ nelson <rn-sig@crynwr.com>  http://crynwr.com/~nelson
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