Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ptsfa!ames!think!husc6!seismo!mcvax!unido!laura!hmm From: hmm@laura.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc Subject: Re: Icons, pipes, etc. Message-ID: <66@laura.irb.informatik> Date: Thu, 9-Jul-87 11:39:36 EDT Article-I.D.: laura.66 Posted: Thu Jul 9 11:39:36 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 12-Jul-87 02:06:32 EDT References: <8705190042.AA14664@cogsci.berkeley.edu> <9954@decwrl.DEC.COM> <610@gec-mi-at.co.uk> <367@sugar.UUCP> Sender: hmm@laura.irb.informatik Organization: University of Dortmund, W-Germany Lines: 38 In article <367@sugar.UUCP> peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter DaSilva) writes: >For building pipelines, a better way would be: > >Drag ls into the work window. >Drag pr into the work window. >Drag the files into the work window. > >Click a, ls; b, ls; ls, pr; pr, whatever. > >This connects a to ls, b to ls, ls to pr, and pr to whatever. > >Then you hit the doit icon or select doit from the menu. (Oh why does everyone >have to use pull down menus when popups are so much more convenient?) Why do we have to use icons for everything ? I really see no reason to move my mouse around, collecting icons & selecting menus, when I can do the same thing with just a few keystrokes in a command line interpreter. Of course window systems have their merits, but I think we should not try to translate our good old unix habits into the mouse&icon language. There are some things that can be easily done with an icon-oriented system, like moving files, executing application programs and such stuff. Unix pipes are not among those. Of course, you can use programs and 'graphical pipes' to build up complex blocks, but the net effect is that you've got to do MORE things to get something done, instead of less. A different thing, of course, are the visual pipes or filters that someone suggested a while ago (sorry, can't find the article). If you can take a 'grep' tool like a magnifying glass, move it over some text, and see only the grepped text, you've got something useful. But none of the windowing systems that I've seen work this way. They all are just some kind of graphical shell with icons for filenames, mouse moving for the mv, cp and rm commands, and mouse clicking for the starting of programs. These are all things I can do just as good in a command line interface, thanks. Hans-Martin Mosner (hmm@unido.uucp) University of Dortmund D