in reply to RE: RE: GUIs and CLIs
in thread The sad state of Perl documentation

No, you can't easily make a script to do "click this button when this light turns green". But you CAN make a script triggered by the data that turns the light green to create the same action clicking the button does.

The point, just to be clear, is that a GUI is not meant to be a machine interface, it's meant to be a human interface. If you're human, use the human interface; when the light turns green, click the button. A script is a machine. Use a machine interface for it.

- email Ozymandias

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RE: RE: RE: RE: GUIs and CLIs
by merlyn (Sage) on Sep 15, 2000 at 01:33 UTC
    No, you can't easily make a script to do "click this button when this light turns green". But you CAN make a script triggered by the data that turns the light green to create the same action clicking the button does.
    And to do that, you need a CLI. Hence, GUIs for basic interaction, but power users must become proficient with CLI.

    -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

[reply]
      No. I can write the code for the script quickly and easily in (as an example) VBScript in Windows without ever opening a CLI, without ever running the script from a CLI, without ever SEEING a CLI. The machine needs the equivalent of a CLI. Not the human.

      - email Ozymandias
[reply]

        You are mistaking CLI for the Command Prompt. Let's expand the CLI abbreviation ... it could be Command Line Interface, but it could also be Command Level Interface. It doesn't really matter whether you put a bunch of commands into a file and then click that file on the desktop of your MSWindows machine or whether you type the name of the file in your command prompt/shell. The important thing is that there are some commands that the program understands. And that the commands are in form "Take this file, do this action to it, select the first page, send it to the printer" and not "move the mouse to the first item in the programs menu and click, then move the mouse down until it rests over the word "Open", click, move the mouse over the inputline marked "File name" in the dialog titled "Open File", click, send the program these keystrokes, send it an {ENTER}, ..."

        While the second is possible to some extent it's very hard to do anything meaningfull with it.

        Jenda
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[reply]

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