Re: [Usability] GNOME Command line interface

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 20:41 -0400, Philip Ganchev wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 7:36 PM, Shaun McCance<shaunm gnome org> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 22:39 +0200, SzG wrote:
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> Yes I agree, there is a built-in solution for each use case. But I'm so
> >> extremely lazy that I preferred working day and night on my "go" script
> >> instead of having to memorize a few hotkeys. But now it's paradise!
> >>
> >> One remark: typing "foo" in a terminal will start the GTK application
> >> "foo", but you will have 2 problems:
> >>
> >>     * your terminal gets blocked while "foo" is running
> >>     * closing your terminal will kill "foo"
> >>
> >> But "go foo" will do the job perfectly.
> >
> > So will "foo&".  I don't want to rain on your parade, because
> > this seems like a neat project.  But it seems to me that the
> > reason the "start" command on Windows needs to handle programs
> > is that it's hard to launch programs otherwise.  It's a solution
> > for a problem that we don't have.
> 
> Not only. It's also a solution to problems like "What program do I use
> to open PDFs again? PDF... PDF... XPDF? No, this is Gnome. Guess I
> have to mouse through the main menu... Oh of course! Evince - how
> could I forget?  evince mydocument.pdf." Similar problems exist for
> ps, all image types, html, "office" document formats, and even text.
> Why do I have to think about what program to use, when >90% of the
> cases all I want to do with a PDF document is to display it with the
> default PDF viewer? Similarly for office documents, etc.

Sorry, perhaps I didn't say what I meant clearly enough.
I'm not disputing the utility of a program that can launch
the right application for a given file or URL.  In fact, I
use gnome-open fairly frequently for exactly that.

I'm saying I don't see the value in running the *program*
foo with "go foo", instead of just "foo".  Unlike on Windows,
applications on *nix systems have a binary installed in the
executable path.  You don't need an extra program to run
them.  You just run them.

Is that more clear?

--
Shaun