[lug] GUI support, can I help you?

[John Hernandez]

They both have their advantages, I suppose.  I like it when a GUI tool 
is provided that can swiftly do the job of one or many CLI programs 
without having to remember switches or read man pages.

In the case of an system administion GUI tool, scaling often seems to 
be one of the biggest problems.  They're generally lousy for batch 
processing and scheduling repeated runs or delayed action.  They also 
tend to stink when you're not sitting in front of the box.  ssh anyone?

Suppose you have 1000 users.  Imagine wanting to extend everyone's 
account expiration date by one week.

CLI - Easy.  Write a script.  Run it.  Done.

GUI - Double-click user 1, add one week to date, click OK, repeat 
exercise 1000 times.

While I agree with Rob that visual representation can be very helpful, 
I'm often frustrated by the feeling of being "boxed-in" by a GUI. 
What's missing is the ability to glue tools together and the resulting 
automation that makes CLI so powerful (at times).

The best users can leverage the power of both tools, where appropriate.

My 2c

Riggs, Rob wrote:

> Some of the CLI interfaces I've seen are ridiculous and should have been
> stillborn. I would not use any of the adjectives below for the majority of
> CLI tools I've seen. The only exception is when the given CLI tool is 'vi'.
> 
> I'm really sick of the CLI worshipping so prevalent in the Unix community.
> CLI is great. I couldn't do my job half as well with out my command line
> tools. Grep, sed, awk, ImageMagick, etc. are indispensable. But GUI tools
> are a far more efficient for the user when systems grow to any appreciable
> complexity. The amount of information that can be conveyed in a GUI is
> orders of magnitude greater than that of a CLI. "A picture is worth a
> thousand words." -- Really, it's true!
> 
> -Rob
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: rotering at animalcules.com [mailto:rotering at animalcules.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 11:51 AM
> To: lug at lug.boulder.co.us
> Subject: Re: [lug] GUI support, can I help you?
> 
> 
> On Fri, Oct 26, 2001 at 11:20:13AM -0600, Harris, James wrote:
> 
> 
>>These [command line tools] ARE the tools that the developer provided for
>>those of us who want to be old fashioned.
>>
> 
> Command line tools are not quaint, archaic, scary, or old fashioned.
> They are compact, efficient, fast, flexible, transparent, and
> powerful.
> 
> If there's one thing I'm going to accomplish before I die it'll be to
> convince people that Flashy GUI != (necessarily good | better than CLI
> | necessarily easy).  If it takes large, pointed sticks of appreciable
> diameter then so be it.
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