

Ask HN: do you know of any commandline usability / improvement research? - viraptor

I'm looking for some serious articles about commandline / console / text-interface usability issues / ideas. It doesn't really matter if the ideas were implemented anywhere or not. I couldn't find anything that's not gui-related so far on google-schoolar and others. Just to be clear - I'm after proper papers, not "10 tips for better bash".<p>Do you know of anything related and not trivial?
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bbuffone
If you look at the links on this wikipedia page you should find useful
information. Aza Raskin has been working with command line interfaces and has
done some interesting things with them.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aza_Raskin>

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viraptor
Thanks - that's a great starting point. I haven't heard about Archy before,
but it also seems contains a lot of nice text-related ideas. Definitely
interesting stuff.

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drinian
Microsoft apparently has done a number of studies on Powershell usability, but
I don't think they've published the results:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=powershell+usability+study>

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kailoa
Friendly shell has gotten some attention over the past few seasons.

<http://fishshell.org/index.php>

<http://fishshell.org/user_doc/design.html>

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jyothi
I don't know any to precisely point to. But one area where commandline
usability is of key interest is in mobile phone services operating on USSD.

I used to consult for a startup in India where number of users on USSD
outnumber WAP. We used to constantly make a lot of tuning on the screens of
the application and the workflow analysing the usage. I however don't have any
papers or scholarly material to point.

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toisanji
I dont know about research, but the command autojump has changed the way I use
the command line significantly and made my life much easier. Check it out on
github

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mahmud
CLIM has input editing and output recording. Look at the McCLIM shell which
freely mixes repl-type input with graphic output.

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gojomo
You may want to look at Inky -- it's not traditional console/text, but rather
taking some of that feel into a "command-line for the web with rich visual
feedback:

Inky: A Sloppy Command Line for the Web

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1llZnsye0M>

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erlanger
You may find these interesting:

[http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Command_002dLine...](http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Command_002dLine-
Interfaces.html)

[http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/winpsh/...](http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/winpsh/cmdline_std.mspx)

This looks very good, but too lazy to sign up:

<http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=800045.801577>

Some user testing for Ubiquity seems relevant:

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Usability/Usability_T...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Usability/Usability_Testing/Fall_08_1.2_Tests)

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x37llnoise
ehm, quicksilver?

