From: Steve Litt <slitt@...>
Date: 2005-12-23T15:49:48+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby version of UMENU

On Thursday 22 December 2005 04:51 pm, Gregory Brown wrote:
> On 12/22/05, Steve Litt <slitt@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > Short answer: I don't know enough about Highline to answer this
> > question authoritatively.
>
> I'm one of the HighLine developers, I was just curious as to what
> UMENU did.  Now that i've read through the source a little bit
> more, my comment was kind of misguided.   Still... there are some
> interesting points here....
>
> > Longer answer: Highline appears to be a programming tool, used
> > by a programmer, to quickly assemble the user interface for a
> > command line app.
>
> Yes, that's what it is.
>
> >UMENU is a program, used by a user, to implement a menu
> > system that calls other programs. This menu system can easily
> > be assembled with an editor, either in native UMENU .mnu files,
> > or in EMDL converted to .mnu.
>
> Cool.
>
> > Highline has ALL elements of user interface -- menus,
> > picklists, edits, validation. UMENU has only a keystroke driven
> > menu, with optional prompted argument substitution, where the
> > menu asks the user for an argument and the user types it.
>
> Gotcha.
>
> > My impression would be that a programmer would apply Highline
> > to one specific program, or a small group of programs. UMENU
> > would be applied by a user (granted a literate one) to all the
> > programs he/she uses frequently.
>
> Yes, that's correct.   Highline is a programmer's tool.  Also,
> after reading the source a bit for UMENU, i understand a bit
> better what it is used for.  Nifty.
>
> > The advantages of UMENU would be speed of integration and
> > minimum debugging, as well as being doable by a mere power
> > user. The advantages of Highline would be the ability to craft
> > a complete user interface for an app.
>
> Perhaps HighLine would be helpful for simplifying the code that
> makes UMENU work.
> This would solve the weak fault tolerance currently in UMENU
> without reinventing the wheel.

The weak fault tolerant stuff is just that I'm not yet really 
comfortable with Ruby exceptions. Basically, I need to handle "file 
not found" exceptions, "not enough command line arguments" 
exceptions, and "can't write file" exceptions. I'd anticipate it 
would be no more than 50 lines of code.

>
> > From what I read about Highline, Highline and UMENU are totally
> > different tools that can't really be compared. Indeed, I could
> > easily forsee several Highline-enabled apps called from a UMENU
> > menu system.
>
> 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.

The real coolness that lies therein is that a single EMDL file can 
drive a UMENU menu system, a HighLine menu system, an IceWM menu 
system, etc, so all those menus would have the same structure and 
choices. So far I've written only EMDL to UMENU, but a simple 
writer object for each output format would do the trick.

>
> You might consider offering YAML configuration support, if you
> haven't already.

I'm not familiar with YAML. What does it stand for, "Yet Another 
Markup Language" or something like that? What does it do?

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
http://www.troubleshooters.com
slitt@troubleshooters.com