
Command Lines: the next UI breakthrough? - far33d
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48387/p44norman1
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jwecker
A couple of years ago my mom, who is not very computer literate at all, asked
me "why can't someone just invent a computer where you type in what program to
run instead of hunting for menus and little pictures all the time?"

There was a movement for several decades that assumed that _everyone_ is
visually oriented, but there are many people who are still language oriented.
Not everyone likes just picture-books.

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nostrademons
Do many people (outside of geekdom) _use_ the Google commands, though? I use
the calculator and units of measure, but generally don't know or bother with
the others. My family doesn't know they exist, nor do most of my friends
(except a couple who fall into the "geekdom" category).

I'd postulate that it was the adoption of the GUI that let the PC spread into
the mainstream. Most people just don't have the patience to look up commands.
Periodically, there are nostalgic pronouncements that the command-line will
reign supreme again, but mostly this seems to be because the tech pundit
population largely overlaps with the comfortable-with-computer-before-they-
became-mainstream population.

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mojuba
The point of the article as I understand it, is that Google itself even
without special commands is a "command-line" tool in a sense that you more
often enter text rather than click.

This kind of "cmdline" tools win in some specific areas because they work
perfectly with thin clients and via thin communication channels. All you need
is to send a couple of words to the server using some relatively simple
standard local application - be it a browser or your console client.

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byrneseyeview
The new command line is closer to a textual representation of the GUI: it
rewards imprecision and ignorance, and trades intuitive correctness 95% of the
time for impossible obscurity the other 5% of the time.

And it's verbose: "List all the files in my current directory that in in
'.txt'" isn't nearly as nice as "ls \ _.txt". Do we really need ad-supported
fluff from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, when we still have bash?

~~~
gibsonf1
But... What if the command line interpreter gets smarter and understands
concepts within your query. "Find all articles last week that mentioned
Ycombinator" for example.

Machine conceptual awareness will be a big thing on the internet, but it is a
_HARD_ problem. We will then enter the world of Find engines instead of search
engines.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Do you do math that way, too? "Consider a matrix with, like, a _lot_ of
elements. Okay? Now flip it around so this one element is where the other
element was and the other element is where this _other_ element was, and..."

There's nothing wrong with expressing a vague idea vaguely, but if you're
definitely looking for definite information, you should use whatever method
gets you exactly what you're after. If you chain together enough 90%-right
assumptions, your probability of getting a wrong conclusion approaches 1.

~~~
gibsonf1
I guess you're assuming extremely ambiguous english queries, and I'm assuming
a good english query similar to my example. With a bad english query, you'll
get bad results guaranteed. This is true for both humans trying to understand
what you're saying, and for the poor computer trying to determine conceptual
context. GIGO

For mathematical formulas and formal queries, the user would need to use
formal notation.

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far33d
Quicksilver is a very successful example of a new variation on the command
line paradigm. Lots of the power but without the annoyance and specificity.

~~~
aston
One up. Quicksilver = command line + intelligent guessing + awesome iconic
GUI. It gets the best of all worlds.

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tx
Interesting. Is there normal version of this article? Without that stupid &
useless flash-frame around it?

~~~
MobileDigit
You can download the PDF from:
<http://www.scribd.com/word/download/48387?extension=pdf>

If you download it you can then use Foxit Reader or this online viewer:
<http://view.samurajdata.se/>

