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MUD-Shell: The Source Of The Idea

We got the idea from SlashDot.Org. We hope they don't mind us quoting the thread:

Re:Command line garbage (Score:5, Interesting)
by mauddib~ (Mauddib@gmx.neat (remove the a) (the second a!)) on Thursday February 08, @07:11PM EST (#113)
(User #126018 Info) http://members.xoom.com/mauddip
Point is, neither the command line nor most GUIs are terribly intuitive. But GUIs, for the end user, make a hell of a lot more sense. Unix's underpinnings are great. Its current interface is absolute garbage.

Well, I understand your points, UNIX interface design was initially a bit poor. But the idea of pipes (and pipelines), shell subsitution, input and output redirectors, etc. etc. has been introduced with a thought behind it.

This thought is called flexibility. And I can't underline this term even more. One of the key things why I use UNIX to it's full extend, and learned to love it, is flexibility. Small applications like sed, awk, find, grep, ls, cp and the others only contribute to this. Good editors like vi or emacs even extends this idea.

But there is a drawback in this idea and it is called "User Friendly". This term has been introduced mainly for new users. The need for this term is obvious in two ways.

First of all, not everybody is as techy as the average Slashdot reader. It is completely out of mind to think that a new computer user will pick up the idea behind UNIX and shells easily.

The second drawback in this idea of flexibility is that it keeps open too many ways for a user to interact with the OS. Again: most techies will like this idea of open-mindedness, and are always willing to learn (myself included). But it also introduces doubt in how to act on certain problems. In 10 seconds I can think of 10 different ways of finding a file on a certain operating system. This might be ideal for flexibility, but it leaves the user with a problem on how to choose his/her best bet.

The idea of using GUI's comes in mind. The use of a mouse comes in mind. But as we can see now, it doesn't really solve the problems involved in making things less complex. Instead of reading manual pages, people are now browsing through all the menus, different windows and still help pages. As it's biggest drawback it seems to loose a lot of flexibility. GUI programs tend to be bigger, capable of doing more and more things, but less than the sum of all the small command line utilities.

Of course, the need for graphical applications is very high. We just *need* them, no doubt about it, but as noted above, it also limits a lot of things. My answer: introduce a shell which is understandable for normal users. A shell which understands lines like:

AI shell> get all files ending in tmp in my home place
OK, I've found 10 files for your request
AI shell> go to the place where my temporary files are stored
OK
AI shell> drop the files there
10 files dropped
AI shell> no, I made an error there, put them back
OK, 10 files put back to your home place
AI shell> edit the document I was working on yesterday
2 files found:
foo.doc
bar.doc
AI shell> edit the last document
OK, editor started
user gets a word editor, opening the file bar.doc

This might seem a bit strange, and really difficult to implement, but if something like this would only nearly be possible, it would be a huge leap for new users to overcome the UNIX-anxiety.


this is not a link
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Now download the implementation.



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