From: Steve Litt Date: 2005-12-23T16:02:55+09:00 Subject: Re: Ruby version of UMENU On Thursday 22 December 2005 08:16 pm, Chad Perrin wrote: > On Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 06:51:00AM +0900, Gregory Brown wrote: > > On 12/22/05, Steve Litt wrote: > > > 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. > > My "short answer" would have been another perspective on the > above paragraph: "What are the advantages of using an orange > crate over an apple?" > > 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. You pretty much got it, although there are some additional usages beyond a K menu/Start menu: 1) Can be used as a persistent menu that does NOT terminate after the user runs a program, but instead returns for the user to run yet another program and another... 2) Can be used as the user's shell in /etc/passwd in order to "jail" the user to specific commands. 3) Can be used as a front end to a command with lots of command line arguments, thereby relieving the user of having to remember the command's exact syntax. This is where prompted argument substitution really shines. 4) Because it outputs only printable characters and linefeeds, and inputs only printable characters, it can be used on ANY UNIX terminal including an ancient teletype terminal. It "refreshes" by printing 25 newlines :-) SteveT Steve Litt http://www.troubleshooters.com slitt@troubleshooters.com