Changing the world -- one desktop at a time
A Missing GUI end user application
A Bit Of History
When I and my fellow clerks started using UNIX as a desktop system back in the early 80s, the terminal interface was the norm and the "learn" program, the System 3 user documentation, and a permuted index of shell commands was our introduction to using it as an application. Vi was first, basic shell second, the index third, either awk or troff or refer was next depending on our focus, then some advanced shell scripting and vi use.
During this learning of the basic UNIX information processing tool kit which took couple of months, we used a terminal based word processor, spreadsheet, and database, accessed data sets with shell tools, learned how to analyse them with the "S" statistical program, format the output and send it to a printer.
We used the shell and its tools to create small scripts that did little things like: put those handy desktop look up lists onto the computer so others could benefit, use refer to index magazine and journal articles, use scripts to generate programs that we the users could maintain, use cron to automate repetitive tasks.
This last application of the technology was important as we got the UNIX system because we said it would increase office productivity and negate the need to increase staff like had happened to offices that had implemented PCs.
Everyone in an office of 400, including all the clerks, middle managers who became super users, apart from most upper management who would use a menu or type in a query to get the latest time stamped print out of any information in which they were interested, learned to use the shell and its tool kit.
Our productivity gains were so good other organizations regretted that they had invested in PCs. The problem back then was 400 PCs or UNIX and its terminals cost $1.2M, so there was no way the PC implementers could sustain the loss of a trade in.
The other problem was that UNIX marketing was mostly word of mouth from individuals who had the knowledge to know or see its worth, whereas the PC had the might of the IBM marketing machine behind it, and was initially marketed as an intelligent replacement that could do off-line work for the old mainframe dumb terminals which couldn't.
Linux Today
Linux has a great advantage for the desktop as it will work on existing PC hardware. Looking at my history, you will see that the other major applications are provided. We even had sound and video capabilities, including text and speech recognition. Although one could get a 32bit GUI workstation, the price was pretty expensive. About $AUD9K for a SUN 3, but they were fast even compared with today's Intel systems and still had the shell tool kit. The main applications like word processing, database and spreadsheets also had hooks so that shell scripts could be used to manipulate and output the data.
It was also possible to use the GUI tool kit to add a windowing interface to the shell.
This is what is missing from the Linux desktop. A windowed interface to the shell tool kit so that users who know how to point and click can use it to increase their productivity or add their own programs that do what they want, how they want, in a way they can understand and add more features.
The main advantage to the shell is it is not a formal programming language, as the inventors saw this was a impedance to the way ordinary end users think. The main advantage to the tools is that each one only does one thing, but does it in all possible ways. Mostly apart from a few exceptions the tools follow the same syntax. The shell provides constructs for linking the tools together so that a script can use as many as needed to solve the required aim. There are also tools for finding out what tool to use.
Another thing missing from Linux is an as easy to use GUI builder so that ordinary users without any programming knowledge can build point and click interfaces.
I have searched high and low and the only tool I have found that fits the bill is proprietary, although the resulting build is license free for distribution. I wish someone in the Linux community would buy it and open source it.
My tool is Runtime Revolution and it has the ability to run shell scripts and commands from within its own scripting language. It can be used without calling shell scripts, and the result can be crossed compiled to other platforms, but I only use it as the GUI front end to my shell scripts.
My RunRev Prototype
Maybe a real programmer in the FLOSS community can look at what I have done, and build a newbie interface to shell scripting.
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/14751.html
Googling brings up some other solutions although many are old and the ones I have tried are too hard for the newbie, which was why I tried to build one myself.
Like all things Linux, I expect that once we have such an interface in Ubuntu, the end users will be competing to show off their own scripts.
When I and my fellow clerks started using UNIX as a desktop system back in the early 80s, the terminal interface was the norm and the "learn" program, the System 3 user documentation, and a permuted index of shell commands was our introduction to using it as an application. Vi was first, basic shell second, the index third, either awk or troff or refer was next depending on our focus, then some advanced shell scripting and vi use.
During this learning of the basic UNIX information processing tool kit which took couple of months, we used a terminal based word processor, spreadsheet, and database, accessed data sets with shell tools, learned how to analyse them with the "S" statistical program, format the output and send it to a printer.
We used the shell and its tools to create small scripts that did little things like: put those handy desktop look up lists onto the computer so others could benefit, use refer to index magazine and journal articles, use scripts to generate programs that we the users could maintain, use cron to automate repetitive tasks.
This last application of the technology was important as we got the UNIX system because we said it would increase office productivity and negate the need to increase staff like had happened to offices that had implemented PCs.
Everyone in an office of 400, including all the clerks, middle managers who became super users, apart from most upper management who would use a menu or type in a query to get the latest time stamped print out of any information in which they were interested, learned to use the shell and its tool kit.
Our productivity gains were so good other organizations regretted that they had invested in PCs. The problem back then was 400 PCs or UNIX and its terminals cost $1.2M, so there was no way the PC implementers could sustain the loss of a trade in.
The other problem was that UNIX marketing was mostly word of mouth from individuals who had the knowledge to know or see its worth, whereas the PC had the might of the IBM marketing machine behind it, and was initially marketed as an intelligent replacement that could do off-line work for the old mainframe dumb terminals which couldn't.
Linux Today
Linux has a great advantage for the desktop as it will work on existing PC hardware. Looking at my history, you will see that the other major applications are provided. We even had sound and video capabilities, including text and speech recognition. Although one could get a 32bit GUI workstation, the price was pretty expensive. About $AUD9K for a SUN 3, but they were fast even compared with today's Intel systems and still had the shell tool kit. The main applications like word processing, database and spreadsheets also had hooks so that shell scripts could be used to manipulate and output the data.
It was also possible to use the GUI tool kit to add a windowing interface to the shell.
This is what is missing from the Linux desktop. A windowed interface to the shell tool kit so that users who know how to point and click can use it to increase their productivity or add their own programs that do what they want, how they want, in a way they can understand and add more features.
The main advantage to the shell is it is not a formal programming language, as the inventors saw this was a impedance to the way ordinary end users think. The main advantage to the tools is that each one only does one thing, but does it in all possible ways. Mostly apart from a few exceptions the tools follow the same syntax. The shell provides constructs for linking the tools together so that a script can use as many as needed to solve the required aim. There are also tools for finding out what tool to use.
Another thing missing from Linux is an as easy to use GUI builder so that ordinary users without any programming knowledge can build point and click interfaces.
I have searched high and low and the only tool I have found that fits the bill is proprietary, although the resulting build is license free for distribution. I wish someone in the Linux community would buy it and open source it.
My tool is Runtime Revolution and it has the ability to run shell scripts and commands from within its own scripting language. It can be used without calling shell scripts, and the result can be crossed compiled to other platforms, but I only use it as the GUI front end to my shell scripts.
My RunRev Prototype
Maybe a real programmer in the FLOSS community can look at what I have done, and build a newbie interface to shell scripting.
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/14751.html
Googling brings up some other solutions although many are old and the ones I have tried are too hard for the newbie, which was why I tried to build one myself.
Like all things Linux, I expect that once we have such an interface in Ubuntu, the end users will be competing to show off their own scripts.
Comment
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Comment by Tom Russell on September 19, 2007 at 1:10am
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I tried that JMeter, but really haven't got the programmer's mentality to understand it, which is why I like the shell.
RunRev can be used without the shell just as easily, but I dig the shell so I just use it to augment my shell with a GUI.
Actually learning RunRev is a piece of cake for non programmers, as the online documentation, examples, and other peoples efforts all combine to make thing easy for the newbie.
Even though I'm not a newbie, I like my scripting skills to remain in that mindset so I can utilise my brainpower and concentration for artistic creativity.
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Comment by Alex Turner on August 23, 2007 at 4:41am
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RE runrev. I like the idea but I think there is a fundamental problem which relates to people. By the time someone has learned how to use runrev, they will have learned enough shell to write shell scripts using a text editor.
It seems to me that the key breakthrough would be to get rid of the text aspect all together. It is an issue I have been thinking about for many years wrt many programming environments.
The only tool that I have come across which sees close to doing this is JMeter. I know that it comes from a very different domain, but in a lot of ways it is achieving the same things. It allows the building up of a complex tree of activities that interact just like the elements of a script. However, each piece is totally GUI controlled.
Now - there are things about the JMeter implementation I don't like. I am not saying it is 100% there, but it is the only example I know of that comes even close.
I am highly tempted to suggest that something could be written - I am thinking tcl/tk - that would allow the creation of shell scripts using a visual tree builder in the same way as JMeter. Each command would have a qui page for it. The common commands like ls, grep etc would have hand written ones, less common might have to rely on some auto-generated interface from the -? command line interrogation.
OK - that is probably enough day dreaming for now!
Best wishes
AJ
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