Aphs.194 net.unix-wizards utzoo!decvax!duke!phs!dennis Thu Jan 7 22:40:46 1982 Re: unc.1658: UNIX objections: WHAT I WANT You do NOT have to rewrite all the commands to get a menu-driven user interface. A menu program which can get to enough information about commands to generate valid argument lists will do the job. I imagine (that's about all the effort I've put into this) that something very similar to a makefile (either one BIG one for all of /bin, /usr/bin, and so forth, or one for each command thus accessible) could contain enough information to do the job properly. These descriptions would form the syntax portion of the program's documentation, and it should be possible to have these printed intelligibly at any point, as a help feature. Now, there ARE obvious exceptions; commands like find are incredibly tedious to build up a command line for in a menu-driven system. You can generate templates for various operations (ie, file name x*x, all files older than x/y/z, and so forth), and string them together, but it's pretty painful. NOTE: Do NOT take this argument to mean that I agree with the ideas in the original article; I've used menu-driven systems, and the only one which I though had done the job right was PLATO (tm?). Their take on the experienced user who doesn't want to see the menu every time is to enable deeper menus to erase the previous one before it filled the screen. Thus, if you knew what you wanted, you could just type it while a bunch of fragmentary menus flashed by. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.