My perspective on the console

[Deborah Norling]

> What I have been thinking for some years now is that what is
> needed is better command line based shells with less cryptic
> commands built out the more cryptic, with some emphasis on
> speech modality, like ability to have the whole interaction in
> a buffer that can be navigated forwards and backwards, by
> screens or pages at a time, or by many other configurable
> means. So yes, I agree, the current command line tools are
> super powerful but not easy to use, and much work needs to
> be done there. Basically we need something other than bash
> as the shell, with different ideas as to how command line
> should be interpreted, managed, and configured, and then
> better applications to run in such an environment.

A lot of the good ideas on designing user-friendly console interfaces are
getting lost because today's programmers either work with a gui or they are
nerdy enough to cope with the cryptic unix command-line.

My husband restores old hardware, the way some people restore ancient cars.
I've gotten to play with lots of old operating systems, and many, like
Tops20, are a lot less cryptic than unix.

To get ideas about how to implement console interfaces in old-fashioned
operating systems, you might want to play with the fully accessible simh
	http://simh.trailing-edge.com

Which is a simulator for old hardware. I've run simh on both linux and
windows. 

Using simh I recently installed and played with RSTS/E on a simulated
PDP-1170. Very fun and gives you a broader perspective.

--Debee