GNOME Command line interface

[SzG]

I'm new to the Unix/Linux world, but I find it extremely fun.
All I am missing from Windows is the "start" command, which can not only
open URLs in the preferred application, but start programs as well in a
fully detached window.

I was searching for something similar for Linux/Gnome/Ubuntu, but all I
found was gnome-open. Works with URLs but not with programs. And it's
not documented. I found it on a blog-post and, regarding the number of
ecstatic comments, it could be an interesting Usability topic.

So I wrote my own "go" command, which can handle programs as well.
Please see
http://linux.subogero.com/?p=146
http://linux.subogero.com/?page_id=153

Do you think it is a good idea?

Best regards
SzG
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[Ted Gould-2]

On Fri, 2009-08-07 at 08:36 +0200, SzG wrote:
> Do you think it is a good idea?

Yes, and I think that GNOME Do largely fills this need.

   http://do.davebsd.com/

I believe it'll even call gnome-open in cases where that's appropriate.

                --Ted



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[Florian Ludwig-2]

Hello SzG,

On Fri, 2009-08-07 at 08:36 +0200, SzG wrote:
> I'm new to the Unix/Linux world, but I find it extremely fun.
Thats nice to hear :)

> All I am missing from Windows is the "start" command, which can not only
> open URLs in the preferred application, but start programs as well in a
> fully detached window.
DISCLAIMER: I don't know the "start" command and I ever used it. So I can't miss it ;)

> I was searching for something similar for Linux/Gnome/Ubuntu, but all I
> found was gnome-open. Works with URLs but not with programs. And it's
> not documented. I found it on a blog-post and, regarding the number of
> ecstatic comments, it could be an interesting Usability topic.
>
> So I wrote my own "go" command, which can handle programs as well.
> Please see
> http://linux.subogero.com/?p=146
> http://linux.subogero.com/?page_id=153
>
> Do you think it is a good idea?

I work on the command line a lot and also interact between command line
and not command line as well a lot. So I just summarize my personal
workflow here, I don't say its perfect or anything.

The use-cases

- “start” without arguments will open a new terminal window.

I do this via alt-f3 (a short cut for opening a new terminal window).
Its the same if I already got a terminal open or not.

Or strg+shift+n or strg+shift+t if I want a new terminal with the same
working directory as the current terminal. Also nautilus "open terminal
here" is quite useful. Or drag 'n' drop of folder or files into a
terminal.


- “start” with a CLI program as an argument will open it in a new fully
   independent terminal window.

I just strg+shift+t ./program
Anyway I don't often open a cli program in a new terminal.


- “start” with a Windows program as an argument will open just that in
  a fully independent window.

alt+f2 or gnome-do for normal programs or just the name of the program
into the terminal "foo" is shorter than "start foo"

- “start” with a file or URL as an argument will open it with the
   preferred application.

just like gnome-open, got an alias "o" for gnome-open as its less to
type :)


--
Florian Ludwig <dino@...>


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[SzG]

I've just tried Gnome Do. I haven't tried the plugins so far.
Seems to work very well with files or URLs. Same as gnome-open or "go".

Actually not the same. The latter 2 commands handle incomplete URLs as
well, "go http://" opens a Firefox window (with an error message, but
it's there), "go mailto:" an empty email. Gnome Do does not seem to like
these.

Commands are a different story. First I tried to start a Midnight
Commander. I typed Super-space, then mc. First it asked me whether I
want to set Evolution as my default email client. Nope. But it opened it
anyway.

Similar story with my CLI integer calculator ogc, installed in /usr/bin.
It opened an OpenOffice Write document instead.

This time I did not give up and tried it again and hit the down-arrow
after typing ogc. And voilá there it was in a drop-down menu!!! But
selecting it did not help, it was not started. I tried mc as well, no
success. Gnome Do seems to have problems with character-based programs.

"go" on the other hand...

Anyway, looking through the plugins, I found some potential winners like
the Firefox bookmark search. :-)

Best regards
Gergely
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[SzG]

Hello,

Yes I agree, there is a built-in solution for each use case. But I'm so
extremely lazy that I preferred working day and night on my "go" script
instead of having to memorize a few hotkeys. But now it's paradise!

One remark: typing "foo" in a terminal will start the GTK application
"foo", but you will have 2 problems:

    * your terminal gets blocked while "foo" is running
    * closing your terminal will kill "foo"

But "go foo" will do the job perfectly.

I've tried Gnome Do as well with mixed results. See my reply to Ted.

Pfiat di
Gergely

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[Philip Ganchev]

I think it's a great idea - to have one CLI command for most of your
needs, to handle arguments appropriately. Unlike Gnome Do, it does not
depend on Gnome, or even on a graphical user interface; such a program
can still be useful on a console.  And, being simple, it is easy to
customize. On the other hand, a more sophisticated program can be made
more intelligent and made to provide feedback.

There are some possible variations for how to handle each argument.
For example, given a directory, you may prefer your command-line
super-command to change to the directory and stay in the CLI instead
of open a graphical file browser.
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[Shaun McCance-2]

On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 22:39 +0200, SzG wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Yes I agree, there is a built-in solution for each use case. But I'm so
> extremely lazy that I preferred working day and night on my "go" script
> instead of having to memorize a few hotkeys. But now it's paradise!
>
> One remark: typing "foo" in a terminal will start the GTK application
> "foo", but you will have 2 problems:
>
>     * your terminal gets blocked while "foo" is running
>     * closing your terminal will kill "foo"
>
> But "go foo" will do the job perfectly.

So will "foo&".  I don't want to rain on your parade, because
this seems like a neat project.  But it seems to me that the
reason the "start" command on Windows needs to handle programs
is that it's hard to launch programs otherwise.  It's a solution
for a problem that we don't have.

--
Shaun


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On Monday 10 August 2009 7:36:15 pm Shaun McCance wrote:

> On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 22:39 +0200, SzG wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Yes I agree, there is a built-in solution for each use case. But I'm so
> > extremely lazy that I preferred working day and night on my "go" script
> > instead of having to memorize a few hotkeys. But now it's paradise!
> >
> > One remark: typing "foo" in a terminal will start the GTK application
> > "foo", but you will have 2 problems:
> >
> >     * your terminal gets blocked while "foo" is running
> >     * closing your terminal will kill "foo"
> >
> > But "go foo" will do the job perfectly.
>
> So will "foo&".  I don't want to rain on your parade, because
> this seems like a neat project.  But it seems to me that the
> reason the "start" command on Windows needs to handle programs
> is that it's hard to launch programs otherwise.  It's a solution
> for a problem that we don't have.

nohup foo& you mean.  Just backgrounding won't prevent SIGHUP.

--
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http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com
apt-get moo


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[Philip Ganchev]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 7:36 PM, Shaun McCance<shaunm@...> wrote:

> On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 22:39 +0200, SzG wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Yes I agree, there is a built-in solution for each use case. But I'm so
>> extremely lazy that I preferred working day and night on my "go" script
>> instead of having to memorize a few hotkeys. But now it's paradise!
>>
>> One remark: typing "foo" in a terminal will start the GTK application
>> "foo", but you will have 2 problems:
>>
>>     * your terminal gets blocked while "foo" is running
>>     * closing your terminal will kill "foo"
>>
>> But "go foo" will do the job perfectly.
>
> So will "foo&".  I don't want to rain on your parade, because
> this seems like a neat project.  But it seems to me that the
> reason the "start" command on Windows needs to handle programs
> is that it's hard to launch programs otherwise.  It's a solution
> for a problem that we don't have.

Not only. It's also a solution to problems like "What program do I use
to open PDFs again? PDF... PDF... XPDF? No, this is Gnome. Guess I
have to mouse through the main menu... Oh of course! Evince - how
could I forget?  evince mydocument.pdf." Similar problems exist for
ps, all image types, html, "office" document formats, and even text.
Why do I have to think about what program to use, when >90% of the
cases all I want to do with a PDF document is to display it with the
default PDF viewer? Similarly for office documents, etc.

Philip
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[Shaun McCance-2]

On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 20:41 -0400, Philip Ganchev wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 7:36 PM, Shaun McCance<shaunm@...> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 22:39 +0200, SzG wrote:
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> Yes I agree, there is a built-in solution for each use case. But I'm so
> >> extremely lazy that I preferred working day and night on my "go" script
> >> instead of having to memorize a few hotkeys. But now it's paradise!
> >>
> >> One remark: typing "foo" in a terminal will start the GTK application
> >> "foo", but you will have 2 problems:
> >>
> >>     * your terminal gets blocked while "foo" is running
> >>     * closing your terminal will kill "foo"
> >>
> >> But "go foo" will do the job perfectly.
> >
> > So will "foo&".  I don't want to rain on your parade, because
> > this seems like a neat project.  But it seems to me that the
> > reason the "start" command on Windows needs to handle programs
> > is that it's hard to launch programs otherwise.  It's a solution
> > for a problem that we don't have.
>
> Not only. It's also a solution to problems like "What program do I use
> to open PDFs again? PDF... PDF... XPDF? No, this is Gnome. Guess I
> have to mouse through the main menu... Oh of course! Evince - how
> could I forget?  evince mydocument.pdf." Similar problems exist for
> ps, all image types, html, "office" document formats, and even text.
> Why do I have to think about what program to use, when >90% of the
> cases all I want to do with a PDF document is to display it with the
> default PDF viewer? Similarly for office documents, etc.

Sorry, perhaps I didn't say what I meant clearly enough.
I'm not disputing the utility of a program that can launch
the right application for a given file or URL.  In fact, I
use gnome-open fairly frequently for exactly that.

I'm saying I don't see the value in running the *program*
foo with "go foo", instead of just "foo".  Unlike on Windows,
applications on *nix systems have a binary installed in the
executable path.  You don't need an extra program to run
them.  You just run them.

Is that more clear?

--
Shaun


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[SzG]

Shaun McCance wrote:

> On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 20:41 -0400, Philip Ganchev wrote:
>  
>> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 7:36 PM, Shaun McCance<shaunm@...> wrote:
>>    
>>> On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 22:39 +0200, SzG wrote:
>>>      
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> Yes I agree, there is a built-in solution for each use case. But I'm so
>>>> extremely lazy that I preferred working day and night on my "go" script
>>>> instead of having to memorize a few hotkeys. But now it's paradise!
>>>>
>>>> One remark: typing "foo" in a terminal will start the GTK application
>>>> "foo", but you will have 2 problems:
>>>>
>>>>     * your terminal gets blocked while "foo" is running
>>>>     * closing your terminal will kill "foo"
>>>>
>>>> But "go foo" will do the job perfectly.
>>>>        
>>> So will "foo&".  I don't want to rain on your parade, because
>>> this seems like a neat project.  But it seems to me that the
>>> reason the "start" command on Windows needs to handle programs
>>> is that it's hard to launch programs otherwise.  It's a solution
>>> for a problem that we don't have.
>>>      
>> Not only. It's also a solution to problems like "What program do I use
>> to open PDFs again? PDF... PDF... XPDF? No, this is Gnome. Guess I
>> have to mouse through the main menu... Oh of course! Evince - how
>> could I forget?  evince mydocument.pdf." Similar problems exist for
>> ps, all image types, html, "office" document formats, and even text.
>> Why do I have to think about what program to use, when >90% of the
>> cases all I want to do with a PDF document is to display it with the
>> default PDF viewer? Similarly for office documents, etc.
>>    
>
> Sorry, perhaps I didn't say what I meant clearly enough.
> I'm not disputing the utility of a program that can launch
> the right application for a given file or URL.  In fact, I
> use gnome-open fairly frequently for exactly that.
>
> I'm saying I don't see the value in running the *program*
> foo with "go foo", instead of just "foo".  Unlike on Windows,
> applications on *nix systems have a binary installed in the
> executable path.  You don't need an extra program to run
> them.  You just run them.
>
> Is that more clear?
>
> --
> Shaun
>
>
>
>  

Hello,

"Just run them" works, but I want to run them in a new window. So I have
to solve 3 little problems:

    * the starting terminal shall not be blocked
    * the started program shall not get killed by closing the starting
      terminal
    * terminal/GTK programs shall be started differently, as a
      terminal-program shall be started through gnome-terminal, nut just run

But the main problem is I'm extremely lazy. I don't want to aim with the
mouse. I don't want to type "gnome-terminal -e mc & disown". I don't
want to remember that with a GTK program it's just "gimp & disown". If a
machine can do this for me, let the machine do it. ;-)

Best regards
Gergely
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[Calum Benson]

On 11 Aug 2009, at 01:41, Philip Ganchev wrote:
>
> Not only. It's also a solution to problems like "What program do I use
> to open PDFs again? PDF... PDF... XPDF? No, this is Gnome. Guess I
> have to mouse through the main menu... Oh of course! Evince - how
> could I forget?  evince mydocument.pdf." Similar problems exist for
> ps, all image types, html, "office" document formats, and even text.
> Why do I have to think about what program to use, when >90% of the
> cases all I want to do with a PDF document is to display it with the
> default PDF viewer?

You don't, usually... the only CLI command you usually need for doing  
that sort of thing is 'gnome-open', regardless of filetype/URI.

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum.benson@...            OpenSolaris Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             [phone]

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems

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