On Mon, 2005-10-03 at 02:58, "å??ç?¢ Wei-Yee Chan (Made in Chinar)" wrote: > Personally, I think that doing things the GUI way is more efficient. > There's this package that I use everyday that requires me to compile a > source rpm everytime I upgrade the kernel, and anytime I need to use it, > I have to key in a very long command. Now, wouldn't a GUI version be > simpler and more efficient for the user? Actually, executing complicated commands repeatedly is where the command line wins, especially complicated sequences that no GUI programmer anticipated. All you have to do is type the command sequence into a file, give it a short name and type the short name every time you want to run the script. That is, at the shell level, every command you can run from the keyboard is automatically the same thing you would execute from a file in a script. If there are a few variables between runs, the shell provides adequate methods to accept and substitute them into the script. GUI's on the other hand often have no scripting mechanism at all, so you have to sit and wait and watch for the right time to punch the mouse. And when they do offer scripting each re-invents it with some new bizarre syntax that doesn't interoperate with anything else, while the unix shell has worked the same way for 30 years or so. If you are drawing pictures, a GUI makes sense. To give commands to a program, it doesn't. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
