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Comment by Smudge | Hacker News Reader

> Any program can only be really useful if it complies with the Unix philosophy.

False! Software can be really useful without being modular and readily composable.

But I enjoy the premise of what Uzbl is aiming to solve. It would certainly make for a richer array of web-related software components, with plenty of uses beyond just web browsers.

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I think the contention comes when you get down to brass tacks; note the author emphasizes "really useful", and hence probably means, sure, your software might be "useful", but it's not useful to the extant that a program you can insert into a pipeline or script is.

sure, many unix programs might be useful, but without good UX design, remain horrible to use (see: tar). taking the unix philosophy as gospel is myopic; computer programs are meant to be used by people, and a program can only be useful if it's well-designed for use by people.

However, tar is a command-line program, and thus easy to interface with.

Thus, I recommend `atool`, which use tar, unzip, unrar, ... but wraps it all in a very good UX not depending on the archive type.

    aunpack my_archive.zip
    aunpack my_archive.rar
    aunpack my_archive.bzip
    ...

It also makes the right choice when several files not under a directory are in the archive (create a new directory and place files inside), when the archive contains a single file (just place the file in the current directory), and when a clash of names can occur with a file/directory already present in your cwd (unpacks in a directory named 'Unpack-XYZ')

Unix is extremely well-designed for use by people. Unix people.

Unless you invert the relationship and install biztalk which we dub in the office "Unix done wrong". Both are useful. One is painful :)

It would have been really true if it had said, > "Any program can be really useful if it complies with the Unix philosophy." (sans "only").

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