I think the only problem with GUI is that most of the developers forget to
support keyboard. It seems they only use mouse as an input device. I think
it was not an accident that couple of years ago Peter Norton started to
develop his commander -- there are number of things that can be done much
faster using a menu style interface than just the CLI. However, for batch
processing CLI is better simply because GUI developers does not care about
batch processing and automatization. Also CLI is easier to document
(redirecting it's output to printer or file). Anyway, I use mostly CLI for
my work and a Norton Commander clone, and of course there are many
applications that could not be done very easily without GUI -- MPLAB for
example :-) I know I could use edlin and CLI compliers, but...

Tamas


On 1/25/07, Wouter van Ooijen <wouter@voti.nl> wrote:
>
> > But I have done a quite a bit of scripting in MS Windows
> > using vbscript,
> > sendkeys, sidekick, etc... With various degrees of success.
>
> But vbscript is not 'the' scripting language of windows applications, it
> just happens to be the inside engine of most Microsoft apps. It won't do
> you much good to automate a task using let's say Firefox.
>
> One problem I had is that I create invoices from an administration
> program (I wrote that myself, in Python), and I want to print them in a
> nice format. I used to have a letterhead in Word, print that on a stack
> of paper, the invoice itself was in html, and I used IE to print that (I
> could not get Firefox to print by default without any headers or
> footers). I had to do that by hand: open the file, print print print (I
> need 3 copies), open next file, etc. I switched to generating rtf, so I
> can have the letterhead and invoice proper in one file, but I would
> still have to open Word, print print print, open next file etc. I could
> not find a Word command line option to cause it to open the file, print
> it, and quit. I recently learned that this can easily be done by
> specifying a macro to run. That macro still can't print 3 times (I dunno
> why, it simply does not work), but I can start Word with the macro 3
> times, no problem.
>
> The point of this is that Word is a typical GUI program, and with its
> macro/scription facility it is not too closed. But to do something basic
> (print a file) in an automated way (what else are computers for!) I must
> first get the idea that this can (only) be done by a startup macro, and
> I have to learn the language for that macro. (OK, google helps a lot for
> both) A decent CLI application would provide a documented way to do this
> from the command line...
>
> Note that this is a GUI issue, not a Microsoft issue. Firefox is even
> worse that IE in this tiny aspect.
>
> > And CLI scripting in Windows systems is very much alive and well, so
> > wouldn't it be nice to have a GUI of the command line
> > utilities? E.g. the
> > standard Win32 command line stuff like SORT, DIR, etc...
> > Should have GUI
> > interfaces accessible from the command line as menu pull
> > downs or popups.
>
> I realy don't see any use for that
>
> > I've always loved that quote about Unix being very friendly, but very
> > selective about it's friends. Perl seems that way to me as well.
>
> not a friend of mine. Python has eaten it alive.
>
> Wouter van Ooijen
>
> -- -------------------------------------------
> Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: www.voti.nl
> consultancy, development, PICmicro products
> docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: www.voti.nl/hvu
>
>
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