The green (black, amber) screen

[Tony Gravagno]

Alberto noted recently that people don't like looking at a character screen. Is that valid anymore?

Sure - end-users don't like green screen. It's really difficult to sell a Character User Interface (CUI) application anymore. Go GUI or go home. But for developers and admins it's very different.

We're seeing a lot of cross-over of GUI for Linux and CLI for Windows. There are no absolutes. We used to have discussions in these forums about the command-line as a negative thing in MV. But with the rise of Linux, the shell prompt is where it's all happens these days. The Linux desktop (GUI for Linux) never quite became the hit thing that people thought/hoped, though of course its still a big thing for those who want it. Windows is still based on GUI, but PowerShell is a first-class citizen, and the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is quite powerful and well-supported. There are also Linux alternatives over Windows, like Cygwin (more CUI) and Swan (more GUI).

We used to talk about how developers wouldn't use MV because of ED. (No, not E.D. but the EDitor ... silly.) But amongst developers who are not fixated on "all GUI, all the time", vi/vim/nano still reign - and there are similar alternatives. For those who "poo pooed" the UPdate processor, we see the same functionality (and less) in SED in QM, minus the public feined distress. With keyboard mapping the natural keyboard keys (arrows, Home, Page Up, Ins/Del, and functions, etc) can be used exactly the same for both of them. And these both operate exactly like vi (but not as good). The point here is that CLI / CUI editing is still mainstream.

All of the DBMS products have a CLI for queries and maintenance - just like TCL.

We write in BASIC, Proc, and macros, while others write shell scripts. Or these days they write JavaScript and then execute it in NodeJS. The language is irrelevant - it's still code entered into a character-based editor and often executed at the CLI.

I've recently been in the bowels of ant build scripts and configuration files for postfix, IPtables (NFtables), cron, tomcat, apache, and others. Very little to none of that stuff can be maintained in a GUI (beyond high level features). It's all in painful text files. Of course we can use a Notepad-like editor on these files - here I'm talking about the content, not the editing tools.

A CLI is often added to products as a new feature, in response to demand. It's not something that is deprecated as antiquated.

SSH is still the way for devs and admins to get into their systems, and terminal interfaces are built-in to modern tools for all of the reasons cited here.

What I'm getting at is that we seem to have crossed over the hump and come full circle - to mish-mash a couple phrases. We thought MV was on the way out, in part because of the whole terminal interface. But the CUI never did go out of style. In fact after the initial push to GUI for consumers, the CUI has resurged as a tool of choice for many developer/admins.

So, when we're talking to people about MV, if there's anyone who is still shy about the CUI, get over it. Yes, you still need to provide a GUI for your business application, for consumers who confuse visual finesse with the quality of business rules. But for system administration and development tasks, you can be loud-n-proud about how this platform is exactly like all of the others with a rich command-line that facilitates maintenance and development.

IMHO

T

[euobeto .]

Yes many end users confuse, "cute screen" with system quality, think that taking the mouse and clicking will be the miracle of life, I personally like to do everything via keyboard so that my ERP, it all "green screen" , and you can work all day without taking your hand off the keyboard and many things just with the numeric keyboard it is possible to perform various operations. I often spend just a few hours or days doing a quality, efficient and fast programming but I spend even more time beautifying the screen. Many end users cannot see that you run a stable, fast, reliable and constantly updated system because it is terminal system, while there are several other systems on the market that have graphical screens that constantly crash and do not perform half of the functions. And they do not know the power behind the MV world, which can support and process multiple calls at once.

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Alberto  Leal
T.I  Campo Grande
LPI ID: LPI000191272
E-mail: alb...@tecwebcg.com
Gmail:  ees....@gmail.com