Tips for installing windows and freeBSD both.. anyone??

[Chad Perrin]

On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 07:35:51PM +0100, Michael Grünewald wrote:
> 
> But in my opinion, a complete GUI software should also provide some 
> command line facilities.  I mean, for instance, a word processing 
> software could be shipped with command line tools that could be used to
>  * inspect document properties (word count, meta information fields);
>  * convert the document to a publishable form such as PostScript;
>  * do field replacement for mailings;
> and many less elementary treatments could also be useful!  Some software 
> comes with a scripting language, but for simple operation and batch 
> processing, this may not be so convenient as a command line tool.

The "easy" way to do that would probably be to write things as
single-purpose libraries with command line interfaces, then write GUI
interfaces that use those libraries.  Failing that, just write command
line tools and write GUIs that use those tools on the back end; writing
them as libraries with command line interfaces is not *entirely*
necessary.

In addition to being the "easy" way, I'd say it's the *right* way to do
it as well.  That way, someone who *just* wants the functionality of one
or two CLI utilities, and not all the functionality of some bloated GUI
all-in-one application, can get the parts independently.

Last I checked, I think K3b uses cdrdao, cdrtools, and growisofs on the
back end, with the GUI just an interface layer over the top of those
tools.  While I'm not a fan of things being tied into a set of DE
libraries for applications I actually use, at least the basic premise of
composing GUI tools from CLI tools is well used in this case.  At least
two of those three CLI tools are also actually composed of several
smaller CLI tools, themselves.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
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