On the subject of ease of use....

[Charles Hallenbeck]

Gena -
There is another under appreciated file manager called 'pilot'
that makes Linux more friendly to the newbie. It is the third
member of the pine suite (pine+pico+pilot) and if you are
comfortable with pine you will be comfortable with pilot. I think
the name stands for the "pine looker-upper of things".

It lets you view a file, edit a file, delete a file, rename a
file, all with one letter commands, you can search for a file by
partial name, navigate among directories, and launch an
application that expects a filename as parameter.

Remember that the unix shell is ten years older than DOS, and
most of the best ideas in DOS were actually copied from the unix
shell, such as piping and IO redirection, to name a few.

Chuck

On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, Georgina wrote:

> Hi
>
> WEll on the subject of ease of use, I believe that it is down to perception of
> the user.  Windows users have to remember keyboard shortcuts for both the OS
> and the screen reader.  Even with the pull-down menus, support lists are
> frequently asked how to access something that is easily found.  Blind people
> have to attempt to gain a spatial understanding of the screen's layout.  I
> think that the obscession to use the GUI is to feel that it brings an equal
> access but this is sadly an illusion as if the program doesn't have keyboard
> shortcuts then we're stuffed.
>
> Since January 1st I've been using Linux to deal with my e-mail because of the
> number of attempts to infect my PC with the Bad trans virus, or whatever it
> was called.  Anyway, I find that I can deal with mail a lot quicker under
> Linux then I can with Windows.
>
> When you consider that to exit many programs you press the letter "q" or "x"
> which is a lot easier than alt + F4.
>
> I've also discovered a simple but great menu program which can easily make
> Linux even easier than Windows as it does work by pressing shortcuts (Letters
> of the alphabet), arrow keys and the return key.  This menu system is called
> pdmenu, check it out.
>
> The bash shell shouldn't be
> compared with DOS because they are worlds apart.  The history buffer, auto
> complete and long filename support make it superior and far more blind friendly.
>
> Don't get me wrong, Windows provides better OCR support and perhaps the
> internet but this is how it is now, who knows what the future might bring.
>
> Gena
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