On Tuesday 01 September 2009 10:00:04 [email protected] wrote: > > [snip] > >> The GUI paradigism allows people who have not learned to talk to > >> computers to communicate using pictures. > >> This picture mode is slow and cumbersome (imagine talking to a Russian, > >> but using pictures to convey your point) > >> > > > > I beg to differ. > > > > Let me see. GUI stands for "graphic user interface" which does not mean > > pictures and it doesn NOT mean slow and cumbersome ... and when I used my > > first X windows (late 80's DEC station) I moved away from the shell only > > thing FAST ... especially if you need to look after a number of apache > > servers, all in differnt places/cities/countries and want to compare > > their httpd.conf's. You can do that by ssh's into all of the machine > > using 4 xterms side by side. > > > > You can't do that without a, what you call slow and cumbersome, GUI.
[snip] >> Let me see. GUI stands for "graphic user interface" which does not mean > > pictures Goodness!! what is a "graphic user interface"? Jobst I started this with outrageous comments so I should honour the discussion. INIT can be a shell, but is usually not. [1] I would not argue that a window is a GUI, so running 4 xterms in a window is an argument for, not against! Try to specify a GUI for mplayer or transcode and you will find it an impossible task. The main argument I have against GUIs is the inflexible and targeted-at-naive- users implementation [rm file - do you really want to do that - yes - if you do the file is gone - yes - sorry I can't allow that]. The GUIs I write say rm file : gone! After a while the users love it, but only after a while. I guess a user-level setting would be good, but I've never bothered, and I fear 'keep it dialed down just in case you have a stupid moment'. Much easier to alias rm "rm -i" in a shell than likewise in a GUI. So in general GUIs use the RH brain to operate. [2] That mode is intuitive and easy to learm, just because of the way we are built. CLI is a LH brain activity [logical, calculating etc] Arguing one is better is foolish. I've never seen a GUI that is faster or less cumbersome than a CLI each in the hands of a suitable user. Anybody have any examples either way? [1] initrd usually invokes 'linuxrc' to set the preamble for switchroot and the main system booting. There it is a shell. [2] most people have LH brain dominant and the RH one arty and intuitive. It is not clear if this is reversed in left handed people. http://www.funderstanding.com/content/right-brain-vs-left-brain Girl brains and boy brains are different and despite years of rude comments girls multi task and boys dont. Girls *seem* to prefer GUIs. Any comments ? The OT stuff is so closely related to the hard core stuff it is hard to decide what is and what is not relevant. Sorry if my judgment is in error. James -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
