Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmontra | Hacker News Reader

> Few have a reason to run command line tools to change the screen configuration, real world usage is to use a GUI as is common on every other graphical OS.

But those few gravitate around OSes using X11. Any other graphical OS has way more users that use the computer they are given to perform the task they are given. No questions asked, no fiddling with settings. When you develop for people that use a system specifically because it allows fiddling, you must not take away functionality. If you do, prepare for criticisms.

View on HN

But you can still fiddle. Unless I missed something, the only complaint here is that the method of fiddling has changed.

And somehow, I doubt that even the most fervent of fiddlers really enjoy typing obscure command line incantations just to configure their laptop when they connect it to a projector.

Are you arguing against the value of a command line interface in the Linux world? Command line is appreciated because of its simplicity and composability. The ability to automate and integrate with a huge ecosystem of compatible tools. Is this really a debate still worth having?

>The ability to automate and integrate with a huge ecosystem of compatible tools

What you are thinking of is an API, not a command line interface. That still exists, and it can be used to build a command line interface. Command line interfaces by themselves are actually very poor for automation and integration, as they force you to do lots of unnecessary formatting and parsing in and out of text strings at every step.

For graphical tasks such as this, the command line is indeed obsolete. The main usage for remaining with the command line in modern times is for manual administration of a remote server, but that is not relevant here as the whole problem space is about administering the local machine as a GUI.

I did document administrative procedures as click here, click there, check that box, click there again. I also document them as commands that can be copy / pasted, even on my laptop. I'd say that GUI administration of a local machine is nice for casual tssks, but a waste of time for repetitive tasks and when I feel that I might need to do it again in future. A command line is much more reproducible. It's dconf vs gsettings.

But that is where you hit impedance mismatch. Some things that are easy to represent in a GUI (because they are graphical tasks) cannot be easily represented in a command line tool. XRandr is probably the worst example of a scriptable tool because you have to manually type in the coordinates and screen sizes which is at odds with how you would configure a graphical screen. If you want to set them based on some logic or calculations, you are better off reaching for a python script or something that is actually pleasant to write code in, and then use that to invoke the real API, not command line tools.

I didn't touch xrandr much in my life (I'm not the OP) and I don't know which APIs are available so I don't know if they are pleasant or not, but wouldn't I write coordinates and screen sizes in Python too?

Anyway, xrandr is already there and Google and stackoverflow are full of examples. I'm not surprised that people would invest half an hour copy pasting code from there instead of identifying and learning the underlying API. I don't see why that should be a problem.

Command-line interfaces do not have to be text-stream based.

It is not true that command-line interfaces are not used to remotely administer GUI desktops. This is actually a huge and very common problem space.

Making a command line interface that outputs binary is even worse than a text stream, because then it cannot be used interactively at all, and that defeats the whole purpose of a command line user interface. At that point you are making tools for programmers, and are better off letting them reach for a real programming language and an API.

See my other comment about impedance mismatch for an explanation of the challenges with using command lines to remotely administer GUI desktops. It can be something that complements GUI administration, but can never possibly supplant it, because if you do that then you're intentionally trying to route around the problem space.

I had specifically Powershell in mind, which is object-oriented and absolutely can be used interactively.

> It can be something that complements GUI administration, but can never possibly supplant it,

There are probably tens of thousands of people whose daily lived experience is that command-line administration of GUI desktops is all they've ever needed and yes, in fact, totally supplants the alternative. I am really struggling with this thread; it's my impression that you've a very narrow view of what people are doing with their computers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com