Re: Great SWT Program

On Nov 30, 6:38 am, b...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Bent C Dalager) wrote:
I guess I got you there, if your response is vicious insults instead
of logical argumentation.

You are, of course, the only one who didn't understand that sentence.

Oh, I understood it alright. I just didn't like what it said, seeing
as it was spreading foul lies about me as usual.

But such a list is far too clumsy to manipulate and use,

If you have a clumsy text editor, yes.

No, even in something modern and un-clumsy like Textpad or Notetab.
You have to copy and paste things around between the editor and the
shell, at minimum, if not just refer back and forth and type them out
longhand due to the editor having a completely cloistered clipboard or
none at all and the shell simply having none at all. (With something
decent and modern you can copy and paste to the shell, of course, and
without mucking around with some clunky "screen" type app or
similarly.)

And corresponding software exists for Windows too.

So you claim.

And so it is true.

Except you have no idea what it is, so you're not actually getting
anywhere.

I can't name it offhand, but it does exist, ***. People use such
functionality every day. Do you seriously believe that the OS with the
largest market share would not have such tools available for it, or
are you just being an argumentative prick as usual?

Unless, of course, you're about to call me a liar. But then you said
you never do that. Oh, but maybe that was a lie too...

I never said that I never do it. I just haven't done it to you yet.

Liar.

If you drag some files onto a gif-outputting converter, it outputs
gifs.

How cumbersome.

No, it's simple and elegant.

In practise, the "gif-outputting converter" is probably actually
a shortcut with a command line for a more general purpose binary with
a command line switch for gif output.

So the /user/ actually has to determine which converter shortcut to
use? How can you live with such cruftiness?

This is ludicrous. You have a converter with no immediately obvious
indication of how to use it at all, or perhaps even that it exists. A
Windows user has a converter with several associated icons for various
conversion destination types. Once you figure out how to use your
converter you need to type the source file name, the destination file
name, AND some -foo option that you need to look up in a man page
somewhere, buried around page 53 of an overly-verbose document in all
likelihood. The Windows user needs to spot the one labeled "convert to
gif" and drop a file on it. By the time you've hit page down 53 times
the Windows user has converted a whole load of files and is already
well into their *next* task. Of course, you'll mention auto-complete:
a crutch, and besides, the file names in this case are arguments; the
shell has no idea what the arguments really are, so it's probably not
going to auto-complete them, and if it will that's crufty in its own
right (what would it do if you were in the middle of "-foo" and hit
tab?). And of course you'll mention being able to specify the
destination path. But in practise, you often want it named the same
(except for the extension changed to ".gif" or whatever) and in the
same directory, and you're saved the typing. And of course if you want
it moved and/or renamed you can do that easily enough as a separate
step.

Useless capability can go, especially if it is complicating the UI as
well as bloating up memory use and the size of the installation on
disk, yes.

Seems like you've been stung by bloated GUI applications once too many
:-)

There are bloated applications with every type of user interface.

What we do know, of course, is that you actually /do/ have to look at
your keyboard because you've said so yourself.

No, I didn't. I basically only do so to orient myself at the start of
typing something. If it's anything long, it's still only the once and
does not add any cost proportional to the length of the input. If it's
short, it's part of the cost of task switching, and it doesn't always
occur even then. Mainly if the previous operation was a mouse-
involving one.

You surely need to look at your keyboard when initially starting to
use it too; you just don't do so as often because you eschew all use
of the mouse and therefore have longer unbroken stints of keyboard-
only use. Even then, that means you do it once in an hour where I
might do it every several minutes. Big deal.

"Constantly" is just another red herring.

"Constantly" is what would be necessary to make it a slowdown and
therefore a problem.

I use emacs, but I do not hate GUIs.

Then why do you bash them every chance you get, in a manner that
implies that nothing that involves a mouse is good enough for you?

That wasn't just a placeholder name for whatever actual utility you
used?

It is the name of the utility.

Well, you failed to state that plainly; it was an obvious word to use
as a placeholder for a variable utility-name that would depend on
exactly what you were converting.

No, wait -- it can't be the actual name of the binary, because the
names of unix binaries are required by POSIX standards to be short,
cryptic, and unguessable based on knowing only the program's function.
Hrm, a conundrum.

I'm guessing here of course, but: you cannot actually name that
standard, can you?

No. That one is probably an unwritten one. Yet observed by all
conforming implementations nonetheless. :)

I actually have to /find/ them and then /install/ them?

That's the alternative to creeping featurism: having to find and
install components that you wish to use but that a fair number of
users do not need. Choose your poison. :)
.

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