Re: top <repeat 100 times \r rant \r end repeat>
Re: top <repeat 100 times \r rant \r end repeat>
- Subject: Re: top <repeat 100 times \r rant \r end repeat>
- From: Alex Robinson <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2002 23:31:08 +0100
"By contrast, many people have raised serious objections to the "black box"
approach used by machines such as the Macintosh, arguing that by making
the machine into a closed system it not only reduces the range of choices
open to the user, but perhaps more importantly it encourages a particular
attitude towards machines in general by mystifying the processes involved."
The Macintosh Computer: Archetypal Capitalist Machine?
by William Bowles, October 1987
<
http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0209/msg00096.html>
>
But why not support verbose aliases for the same commands? Have text
>
macros/autocompletion that can intelligently expand an abbreviated form (or
>
even go the other way)?
Because these commands now span multiple versions of multiple OSes. Who
would impose these new aliases? What would people do who only know these
unsupported commands when they find themselves without them? Yes, Apple
could stick in new aliases for the masses, but given a) their convoluted
approach to managing environments (netinfo vs hidden cascading . files), b)
their hands-off, if you want to go under the hood you're on your own,
approach and c) their propensity to rewrite and break this kind of stuff, I
wouldn't hold your breath.
>
The ability to view a summary of common options
>
without having to pull up multi-page mans?
What about apropos? And if you don't want to view it from the command line
ManThor
<
http://www.blackmac.de/manthor/>
ManOpen
<
http://www.clindberg.org/projects/ManOpen.html>
both of which include a GUI to apropos
>
To work spatially? Non-linearly?
Sorry has. What do you mean? Non-Linearly? What about having as many
terminals open as you want? Spatially? You don't want to be able to be in
the same place in more than one window?
>
Perhaps even... <gasp> some TYPOGRAPHY?
Well, here I'd agree with you. The way to handle colouring and fonts is
arcane. Maybe someone will make a nice GUI that will generate the
necessary lines to insert in your relevant .profile or .csrc file. Maybe
someone already has.
>
Mmmm. But how's any newcomer supposed to get to your intermediate/expert
>
level if that essential first-step beginner experience "blows"?
By asking. By trying. And with OSX, the beginner has the largest group to
ask ever. And the most unified environment. And it's really not that hard -
as long as you concentrate and don't let yourself glaze over. As someone
who's first ever programming language was AppleScript, I'd say that getting
up to a rudimentary level with the shell is far far easier. YMMV.
>
I consider the division totally bogus. "Pretty buttons for the happy
>
idiots, Real Text for Real Men." Reactionary humbug.
Fair dos. The quote at the beginning could equally be turned on its head
and applied to the CLI (it is after all, an equally arbitrary and arcane
interface). But the distinction is still valid - here's an interface if you
want to hide from your machine's complexity vs ok, you're prepared to roll
your sleeves up and get a bit dirty. And meanwhile developers are providing
more and more ways of getting down and dirty while wearing rubber gloves.
Off the top of my head: ScriptGui, ShellShell, Moose's Apprentice,
BrickHouse, BatChmod. These are all fine products because they also enable
the user to gain some understanding of what they're doing.
OSX is the OS equivalent of Perl - There's more than one way to do it
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