A Bit OT: Making the Command-Line Friendlier (DOS-Background, Long)

[Samuel Thibault]

Veli-Pekka Tätilä, le Mon 09 Oct 2006 21:21:16 +0300, a écrit :
> So what I'll use in stead nearly always is ls -1.

Yeah, that's a usual option for accessibility.

> And I'd like to make that the default including piping it to the more
> or less commands.

ls always uses -1 when piped (for permitting | xargs for instance).

> Well, does the alias syntax you showed me also work for zsh?

Yes: alias is a standard sh command, so pretty all shells have it.

> > Just use the --time-style=locale option.  Again, the standard unix way is 
> > to use the format above.
> Is that the C-locale?

Exactly.  Using --time-style=locale makes ls use your own
language/country combinaison's locale.

> > The problem is _not_ to have programmers start thinking about this,
> > but to provide them information so that they can put themselves in your 
> > place.
> I agree most of the time. SOmtimes it seems accessibility and usability 
> conflict with each other, and in those cases usability is likely to win. For 
> example, separating by commas would be easier to parse in once head with 
> speech or in most scripting languages, but most people will find spaces look 
> nicer.

And programmers wouldn't even have thought about using commas (I
wouldn't).  The problem is really "accessibility of accessibility" (i.e.
providing programmers access to the accessible way of thinking).

> > Please don't consider that programmers are necessarily lazy.
> They are sometimes. One such thing are error messages.

Well, here, yes <grin>

> > (that's why there is usually no "undelete" command in Unix, btw).
> And no decent script to implement a recycle bin, right?

Indeed.  But gnome & co implement it of course.

> To be real affective I suppose one would have to hook into the
> underlying sys calls to have this work in apps in addition to just
> shells.

IIRC it was developped, but never really to the point of being usable.

> is there a Perl shell? I think I read about some such project but they
> aren't actively being developed.

Possibly, yes.

> You need text config files and the shell as soon as something does
> not have a front-end or is not thought to be important enough to be
> configured by the average user.

Well, at least you have a relatively simple text config (with doc).  On
windows you'd have to dig into the registry...

> > Manual pages are reference documentation (
> Arrgh, that's quite bad really. Fortunately GUI apps have a sounder 
> philosophy in this. No-one expects you to absolutely master an app based on 
> a pure menu reference, for example. I know the comparison is a bit unfair 
> but needless to say, I really don't liek this philosophy.

But once learned, this is a very efficient approach.  Yes, it means
learning.  Well, yes, bare unix will probably be for programmers for
long.

> > introduction documentation (info pages, books and teachers are there
> Howabout Wikis?

There are on the web.

> > unfortunately) few people know. Type info coreutils for instance, for
> Thanks, will try that. HOW widely are these available?

What do you mean by "widely"?  Any distribution will for sure provide
them.  Now, do all packages have such documentation?  GNU packages, yes,
because that's in their development policy.  Else, not so much,
unfortunately.

BTW, maybe you'l find pinfo easier for browsing info pages.

> /S Displays files in specified directory and all subdirectories.
> -R, --recursive list subdirectories recursively
> 
> Which makes sense for programmers, computer science folk and mathematicians 
> but leaves the rest wondering what they might have missed. I find the DOS 
> version clearer.

Yes, just to repeat myself: unix was meant for programmers ; DOS, for
real users...

> > Mmm, I can't remember exactly which one this was, maybe mc (midnight
> > commander) and other such tools may fit your needs?
> I tried MC a couple of days back and my WIndows screen reader didn't track 
> the focus in the terminal emulator. It is probably quite a complex app for 
> console screen readers.

Oh, maybe you should use the accessible version which has proper cursor
routing: amc.

> The Norton tree is simply a scrolling ASCII tree of directories in which you 
> can navigate with arrows and go to a dir with enter.

Ok.  I don't know such program.

Samuel