Re:The -a to -z of Command-Line Options (2003)
by yourapostasy on Monday December 10, 2018 @11:17AM
(#18648915)
MPW had an interesting way to ease GUI-centric users into its CLI-centric world. There was a mode you could trigger for commands that brought up a help-oriented GUI for the command to build the command argument list, which would then echo onto the command line. Depending upon who built the GUI, it was usually a less terse and friendlier help for new users than AIX's SMIT, for those who are familiar with that.
I sometimes wish there was an open source equivalent like that for Linux , but with live, interactive building of the command as the GUI options were manipulated so new users could get a feel for commands more readily. This would act as an intermediate help system for casual users that is friendlier than manpages, and more immediate than searching around the Net.
[1] https://www.macintoshrepository.org/1360-macintosh-programme...
Re:The -a to -z of Command-Line Options (2003)
by int_19h on Monday December 10, 2018 @12:55PM
(#18649726)
> There was a mode you could trigger for commands that brought up a help-oriented GUI for the command to build the command argument list, which would then echo onto the command line.
This still lives on in a sense. For example, in VSCode, many UI commands translate to executing shell code in its internal terminal (and you can see both the commands and the output).
When I used it in 1986 it really needed a big machine, i.e. 512K RAM :-)