<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 TRANSITIONAL//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=UTF-8"> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="GtkHTML/3.12.1"> </HEAD> <BODY> On Sun, 2007-05-08 at 17:41 -0700, Matthew Voss wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE> But a front-end to a command line command would make peoples life easier wouldn't it? </BLOCKQUOTE> It depends very much on the command, actually. There are some things (far fewer than most believe!) that are easier and better done on the command line. (This is, incidentally, why Bruce chose "find" -- he deliberately picked a utility that he thought would be of questionable use when GUIed and beat the straw stuffing out of it.) For most things, however, and for most people, GUIfied versions of commands would be better than the command line. This is, after all, why GUIs were invented in the first place. But.... The person who writes the GUI wrapper for a CL utility will rarely receive the benefit of it because, simply, to wrap a non-trivial utility in a GUI would require learning the utility so well that the GUI would be of little use to the person who made it. So if you're only considering yourself when writing utilities (and most software writers do only think of themselves), there's little benefit to "wasting time" on making GUIs. <TABLE CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="0" WIDTH="100%"> <TR> <TD> -- Michael T. Richter <<A HREF="mailto:ttmrichter@gmail.com">ttmrichter@gmail.com</A>> (GoogleTalk: ttmrichter@gmail.com) Experts in advanced countries underestimate by a factor of two to four the ability of people in underdeveloped countries to do anything technical. (Charles P Issawi) </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </BODY> </HTML>