Re: OT: automation

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Mon, Nov 09, 2009 at 10:20:01AM +0100, Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> Am Freitag, 6. November 2009 09:22:14 schrieb olafBuddenhagen@gmx.net:

> > The Right (TM) alternative is simply:
> > 
> >    find -print0|xargs -0
> 
> Does it manage spaces in filenames? 

Well, it passes the whole file name as a single argument to the command.
So it handles spaces just fine -- unless of course the command itself
parses them, which would require additional acrobacy :-)

> > > Most computer users nowadays never enter a shell - and never means
> > > never, because they don't even know they have a shell.
> 
> > (Admittedly, it would be much easier if shells were more "welcoming"
> > and better integrated with the GUI stuff... 
> 
> Maybe the VRL project can give you some more ideas how that could
> look: 
> 
> - http://www.mihosoft.de/software-projects/vrl/vrl-introduction.html
> 
> It's written by a friend of mine (though we didn't have contact for
> quite some time) and it effectively gives kind of a graphical shell:
> users can graphically connect object output with other object input -
> like pipes in a shell. 
> 
> -> example: http://www.mihosoft.eu/Media/Software Projects/VRL/VRL-
> Introduction/vrl-screenshot1-full.png

I have had my share of graphical programming: we had to use LabView in
some university workshop. I didn't find it either more intuitive or more
clear than text-based programming languages; rather the opposite -- in
fact, I took the liberty to rant about it a bit in the protocol for our
experiment :-)

I guess though that it could be helpful in hooking people that wouldn't
touch a traditional programming language with a ten-foot pole...

Anyways, that's totally unrelated to what I'm talking about. The idea is
actually quite simple (I think I mentioned it somewhere already, perhaps
in the mail on the netrik ML I linked): every command has both a command
line, and a GUI representation; you can use either. Furthermore, they
always reflect each other -- i.e. when you operate some GUI elements,
the equivalent text command is displayed too; and vice versa. This way
you can mix both methods in a sigle command for maximum efficiency; and
it also faciliates learning.

Perhaps I should just put these three sentences in a blog article and be
done with it :-)

-antrik-