From: Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@...>
Date: 2005-12-23T10:48:58+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby version of UMENU

On 12/22/05, Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com> wrote:

> Yes, it's true you can't eat an orange crate, but but it sure does make
> it easy to carry oranges around.  Unless I'm way out in left field, my
> impression is that UMENU is basically a replacement for something like
> the K menu in KDE, or the Start menu in Windows, but designed to be used
> with window managers for X when the user doesn't like to use his/her
> mouse for choosing applications from a menu.  I don't see how that makes
> UMENU and Highline comparable at all.
>
> Please let me know if I misunderstood the purpose of UMENU, Steve.

That's what it sounds like.  I don't think that this was unclear after
Steve's (or my) last post.

> > Yeah, I kind of misjudged the purpose of UMENU when I read through the source.
> > It does look pretty neat, and would probably be a great wrapper for
> > HIghLine applications, though building menus is easy enough to do in
> > pure ruby using our system :)
> >
> > I do like the fact that you support a sort of intermediate
> > configuration setup for menus so an admin or power user can build
> > them.  That's very cool.
>
> . . . and I still don't think you understand UMENU's purpose.  That, or
> I don't.

Are you just looking to argue, or did you not read my last post?

It is some sort of command line based menu for executing applications.
 It can benefit greatly from using HighLine under the hood.  The
source was not exactly 'inviting' to read as it's pretty much a direct
port of some perl.   My comment was that HighLine could help that (in
my second post).

It 'would' be a great way to string together a bunch of HighLine
programs.   I will probably use UMENU at work in the near future.  
Though I mostly abhor character based menus, it'll make a few of my
co-workers very happy to have a menu to work with.

However, I might take the time to write the user interface over in
HighLine, because then I'm getting the validation and error handling
for free. (And not to mention ways to make it look spiffy and format
nicely)  If  I do this, I will certainly send Steve my code.