graphic pipes (was: where to do line editing?)

[Chris Calabrese[rs]]

In article <6246 at chinet.chi.il.us>, les at chinet.UUCP writes:
> Hmmm, could they really pick out, say 'tr', from 2 or 3 hundred similar
> tools faster than typing the name in?  What about command line options?
> Most tools need more than a filename.  If selecting the icon would then
> present a form of choices for arguments and do some error checking before
> going on to the next tool, there might be some advantage.

For a good implimentation(sp?) of how to have command line options
and icons living together, check out the way it's done on the
(gak, gag, gawk, etc) Atari ST under the GEM desktop.

Essentially, the shell knows which files require command lines, and
open a window which lets you type it in.

I still would rather have a text based shell for any _real_ work,
though I often use a WIMP interface to often used tools which require
no command line arguments.
-- 
--------
	Christopher J. Calabrese
	AT&T Bell Laboratories
	ulysses!cjc