What are your opinions on developing for the command line first, then adding a GUI on after the fact by simply calling the command line methods?
eg.
W:\ todo AddTask "meeting with John, re: login peer review" "John's office" "2008-08-22" "14:00"
loads todo.exe and calls a function called AddTask that does some validation and throws the meeting in a database.
Eventually you add in a screen for this:
============================================================
Event: [meeting with John, re: login peer review]
Location: [John's office]
Date: [Fri. Aug. 22, 2008]
Time: [ 2:00 PM]
[Clear] [Submit]
============================================================
When you click submit, it calls the same AddTask function.
Is this considered:
a good way to code
just for the newbies
horrendous!.
Addendum:
I'm noticing a trend here for "shared library called by both the GUI and CLI executables." Is there some compelling reason why they would have to be separated, other than maybe the size of the binaries themselves?
Why not just call the same executable in different ways:
"todo /G" when you want the full-on graphical interface
"todo /I" for an interactive prompt within todo.exe (scripting, etc)
plain old "todo <function>" when you just want to do one thing and be done with it.
Addendum 2:
It was mentioned that "the way [I've] described things, you [would] need to spawn an executable every time the GUI needs to do something."
Again, this wasn't my intent. When I mentioned that the example GUI called "the same AddTask function," I didn't mean the GUI called the command line program each time. I agree that would be totally nasty. I had intended (see first addendum) that this all be held in a single executable, since it was a tiny example, but I don't think my phrasing necessarily precluded a shared library.
Also, I'd like to thank all of you for your input. This is something that keeps popping back in my mind and I appreciate the wisdom of your experience.
I would go with building a library with a command line application that links to it. Afterwards, you can create a GUI that links to the same library. Calling a command line from a GUI spawns external processes for each command and is more disruptive to the OS.
Also, with a library you can easily do unit tests for the functionality.
But even as long as your functional code is separate from your command line interpreter, then you can just re-use the source for a GUI without having the two kinds at once to perform an operation.
Put the shared functionality in a library, then write a command-line and a GUI front-end for it. That way your layer transition isn't tied to the command-line.
(Also, this way adds another security concern: shouldn't the GUI first have to make sure it's the RIGHT todo.exe that is being called?)
Joel wrote an article contrasting this ("unix-style") development to the GUI first ("Windows-style") method a few years back. He called it Biculturalism.
I think on Windows it will become normal (if it hasn't already) to wrap your logic into .NET assemblies, which you can then access from both a GUI and a PowerShell provider. That way you get the best of both worlds.
My technique for programming backend functionality first without having the need for an explicit UI (especially when the UI isn't my job yet, e.g., I'm desigining a web application that is still in the design phase) is to write unit tests.
That way I don't even need to write a console application to mock the output of my backend code -- it's all in the tests, and unlike your console app I don't have to throw the code for the tests away because they still are useful later.
I think it depends on what type of application you are developing. Designing for the command line puts you on the fast track to what Alan Cooper refers to as "Implementation Model" in The Inmates are Running the Asylum. The result is a user interface that is unintuitive and difficult to use.
37signals also advocates designing your user interface first in Getting Real. Remember, for all intents and purposes, in the majority of applications, the user interface is the program. The back end code is just there to support it.
It's probably better to start with a command line first to make sure you have the functionality correct. If your main users can't (or won't) use the command line then you can add a GUI on top of your work.
This will make your app better suited for scripting as well as limiting the amount of upfront Bikeshedding so you can get to the actual solution faster.
If you plan to keep your command-line version of your app then I don't see a problem with doing it this way - it's not time wasted. You'll still end up coding the main functionality of your app for the command-line and so you'll have a large chunk of the work done.
I don't see working this way as being a barrier to a nice UI - you've still got the time to add one and make is usable etc.
I guess this way of working would only really work if you intend for your finished app to have both command-line and GUI variants. It's easy enough to mock a UI and build your functionality into that and then beautify the UI later.
Agree with Stu: your base functionality should be in a library that is called from the command-line and GUI code. Calling the executable from the UI is unnecessary overhead at runtime.
#jcarrascal
I don't see why this has to make the GUI "bad?"
My thought would be that it would force you to think about what the "business" logic actually needs to accomplish, without worrying too much about things being pretty. Once you know what it should/can do, you can build your interface around that in whatever way makes the most sense.
Side note: Not to start a separate topic, but what is the preferred way to address answers to/comments on your questions? I considered both this, and editing the question itself.
I did exactly this on one tool I wrote, and it worked great. The end result is a scriptable tool that can also be used via a GUI.
I do agree with the sentiment that you should ensure the GUI is easy and intuitive to use, so it might be wise to even develop both at the same time... a little command line feature followed by a GUI wrapper to ensure you are doing things intuitively.
If you are true to implementing both equally, the result is an app that can be used in an automated manner, which I think is very powerful for power users.
I usually start with a class library and a separate, really crappy and basic GUI. As the Command Line involves parsing the Command Line, I feel like i'm adding a lot of unneccessary overhead.
As a Bonus, this gives an MVC-like approach, as all the "real" code is in a Class Library. Of course, at a later stage, Refactoring the library together with a real GUI into one EXE is also an option.
If you do your development right, then it should be relatively easy to switch to a GUI later on in the project. The problem is that it's kinda difficult to get it right.
Kinda depends on your goal for the program, but yeah i do this from time to time - it's quicker to code, easier to debug, and easier to write quick and dirty test cases for. And so long as i structure my code properly, i can go back and tack on a GUI later without too much work.
To those suggesting that this technique will result in horrible, unusable UIs: You're right. Writing a command-line utility is a terrible way to design a GUI. Take note, everyone out there thinking of writing a UI that isn't a CLUI - don't prototype it as a CLUI.
But, if you're writing new code that does not itself depend on a UI, then go for it.
A better approach might be to develop the logic as a lib with a well defined API and, at the dev stage, no interface (or a hard coded interface) then you can wright the CLI or GUI later
I would not do this for a couple of reasons.
Design:
A GUI and a CLI are two different interfaces used to access an underlying implementation. They are generally used for different purposes (GUI is for a live user, CLI is usually accessed by scripting) and can often have different requirements. Coupling the two together is not a wise choice and is bound to cause you trouble down the road.
Performance:
The way you've described things, you need to spawn an executable every time the GUI needs to d o something. This is just plain ugly.
The right way to do this is to put the implementation in a library that's called by both the CLI and the GUI.
John Gruber had a good post about the concept of adding a GUI to a program not designed for one: Ronco Spray-On Usability
Summary: It doesn't work. If usability isn't designed into an application from the beginning, adding it later is more work than anyone is willing to do.
#Maudite
The command-line app will check params up front and the GUI won't - but they'll still be checking the same params and inputting them into some generic worker functions.
Still the same goal. I don't see the command-line version affecting the quality of the GUI one.
Do a program that you expose as a web-service. then do the gui and command line to call the same web service. This approach also allows you to make a web-gui, and also to provide the functionality as SaaS to extranet partners, and/or to better secure the business logic.
This also allows your program to more easily participate in a SOA environement.
For the web-service, don't go overboard. do yaml or xml-rpc. Keep it simple.
In addition to what Stu said, having a shared library will allow you to use it from web applications as well. Or even from an IDE plugin.
There are several reasons why doing it this way is not a good idea. A lot of them have been mentioned, so I'll just stick with one specific point.
Command-line tools are usually not interactive at all, while GUI's are. This is a fundamental difference. This is for example painful for long-running tasks.
Your command-line tool will at best print out some kind of progress information - newlines, a textual progress bar, a bunch of output, ... Any kind of error it can only output to the console.
Now you want to slap a GUI on top of that, what do you do ? Parse the output of your long-running command line tool ? Scan for WARNING and ERROR in that output to throw up a dialog box ?
At best, most UI's built this way throw up a pulsating busy bar for as long as the command runs, then show you a success or failure dialog when the command exits. Sadly, this is how a lot of UNIX GUI programs are thrown together, making it a terrible user experience.
Most repliers here are correct in saying that you should probably abstract the actual functionality of your program into a library, then write a command-line interface and the GUI at the same time for it. All your business logic should be in your library, and either UI (yes, a command line is a UI) should only do whatever is necessary to interface between your business logic and your UI.
A command line is too poor a UI to make sure you develop your library good enough for GUI use later. You should start with both from the get-go, or start with the GUI programming. It's easy to add a command line interface to a library developed for a GUI, but it's a lot harder the other way around, precisely because of all the interactive features the GUI will need (reporting, progress, error dialogs, i18n, ...)
Command line tools generate less events then GUI apps and usually check all the params before starting. This will limit your gui because for a gui, it could make more sense to ask for the params as your program works or afterwards.
If you don't care about the GUI then don't worry about it. If the end result will be a gui, make the gui first, then do the command line version. Or you could work on both at the same time.
--Massive edit--
After spending some time on my current project, I feel as though I have come full circle from my previous answer. I think it is better to do the command line first and then wrap a gui on it. If you need to, I think you can make a great gui afterwards. By doing the command line first, you get all of the arguments down first so there is no surprises (until the requirements change) when you are doing the UI/UX.
That is exactly one of my most important realizations about coding and I wish more people would take such approach.
Just one minor clarification: The GUI should not be a wrapper around the command line. Instead one should be able to drive the core of the program from either a GUI or a command line. At least at the beginning and just basic operations.
When is this a great idea?
When you want to make sure that your domain implementation is independent of the GUI framework. You want to code around the framework not into the framework
When is this a bad idea?
When you are sure your framework will never die
Related
I am using perl tray from activestate and have a question. I am wanting to make some type of ui or way for a user to set "Settings" on my application. These settings can just be written / read from a text file that is stored on the users computer.
The part I am not understanding though is how to go about making a ui. The only thing i can think of is showing a local perl page that runs on their computer to write to the file. However, I'm not sure how i could get perl to run in the browser when only using perltray.
Any suggestions?
PerlTray is an odd duck. It has an implicit event loop that kicks in after you either fall off the end of your program or after your 1st call to exit(). This makes it incompatible with most other common GUI event loops or most mini-server techniques that operate in the same process & thread.
2 possibilities come to mind:
Most Likely you'll have success spawning a thread or process that creates a traditional perl GUI or a mini-server hosting your configuration web-app. I'd probably pick Tkx, but that's just my preference.
I have a suspicion that the Event Loop used by Win32::GUI may actually be compatible with the event loop in PerlTray, but some experimentation would be required to verify that. I generally avoid Win32::GUI because it's not platform independent, but if you're using PerlTray, you're tied to Windows anyway...
I am a new one to Common Lisp (using Clozure Common Lisp under Microsoft Windows), who is familiar with c and python before. So maybe the questions are stupid here, but be patient to give me some help.
1) What's is the usual way to run a common lisp script?
Now, I wrote a bat file under windows to call ccl exe(wx86cl.exe) and evaluate (progn (load "my_script_full_path") (ccl:quit)) every time when I want to "run" my script. Is this a standard way to "run" a script for common lisp?
Any other suggestion about this?
2) What's the difference between (require 'cxml) and (asdf:operate 'asdf:load-op :cxml)?
They are seems to be the same for my script, which one should I use?
3) ignore it, not a clear question
4) When I want to load some library (such as require 'cxml), it always takes time(3s or even 5s) to load cxml every time when I "run" my script, there is also much log to standard output I show below, it seems like checking something internal. Does it means I have to spent 3-5s to load cxml every time when I want to run a simple test? It seems like a little inefficient and the output is noisy. Any suggestion?
My Script
(require 'cxml) (some-code-using-cxml)
And the output
; Loading system definition from D:/_play_/lispbox-0.7/quicklisp/dists/quicklisp/software/cxml-20101107-git/cxml.asd into #<Package "ASDF0">
;;; Checking for wide character support... yes, using code points.
; Registering #<SYSTEM "cxml-xml">
......
some my script output
---EDIT TO ADD MORE----
5) I must say that I almost forget the way of dumping image to accelerate the loading speed of lisp library. So, what is the normal process for us to develop a (maybe very simple) lisp script?
Base on the answer of what I got now, I guess maybe
a) edit your script
b) test it via a REPL environment, SLIME is a really good choice, and there should be many loop between a <==> b
c) dump the image to distribute it?( I am no sure about this)
6) Furthermore, what is the common way/form for us to release/distribute the final program?
For a lisp library, we just release our source code, and let someone else can "load/require" them.
For a lisp program, we dump a image to distribute it when we confirm that all functions go well.
Am I right?
What form do we use in a real product? Do we always dump all the thing into a image at final to speed up the loading speed?
1) Yes, the normal way to run a whole programme is to use a launcher script. However, windows has much, much better scripting support these days than just the bat interpreter. Windows Scripting Host and PowerShell ship as standard.
1a) During development, it is usual to simply type things in a the REPL (Read-Eval-Print-Loop, i.e. the lisp command line), or to use something like SLIME (for emacs or xemacs) as a development environment. If you don't know what they are, look them up. You may wish to use Cygwin to install xemacs, which will give you access to a range of linux-ish tools.
2) Require is, IIRC, a part of the standard. ASDF is technically not, it is a library that operates to make libraries work more conveniently. ASDF has a bunch of features that you will eventually want if you really get into writing large Lisp programmes.
3) Question unclear, pass.
4) See 1a) - do your tests and modifications in a running instance, thus avoiding the need to load the library more than once (just as you would in Python - you found the python repl, right?). In addition, when your programme is complete, you can probably dump an image which has all of your libraries pre-loaded.
Edit: additional answers:
5) Yes
6) Once you have dumped the image, you will still need to distribute the lisp binary to load the memory image. To make this transparent to the user, you will also have to have a loader script (or binary) to run the lisp binary with the image.
You don't have to start the lisp from scratch and load everything over again each time you want to run a simple test. For more efficient development, interactively evaluate code in the listener (REPL) of a running lisp environment.
For distribution, I use Zachary Beane's Buildapp tool. Very easy to install and use.
Regarding distribution -
I wrote a routine (it's at home and unavailable at the moment) that will write out the current image as a standard executable and quit. It works for both CLISP and SBCL.
I can rummage it up if you like.
I am in the process of building interactive front-ends to a
distributed application which to date has been used to run workloads
that had a batch-job like structures and needed no UI at all. The application is mostly written in Perl and C and runs on a mix of Unix and Windows machines, but I think this isn't relevant to the UI.
The first such frontend is going have a command-line user interface --
currently, I envision something similar to the CLIs of the Procurve
switches and Cisco routers that I have worked with.
Like modern network gear CLIs, commands are going to resemble
simple sentences, (i.e. show vlans ports 1-4) and the CLI will
have some implicit state, much in the way that Unix shells and
cmd.exe in Windows have environment variables and current working
directories. Moreover, I'd like to implement great tab completion that
is aware of the application's state as much as possible and I want to be able to do that with as
little application-specific code as possible.
The low-level functionality (terminal I/O) seems easy to implement on
top of GNU Readline or similar libraries, but that's only where the
real fun starts. So far I have looked at the Perl modules
Term::Shell
and
Term::ShellUI,
but I'm not convinced that I want to use either of them. I am still
considering rolling my own solution and at the moment I am primarily looking for
inspiration.
Can you recommend any application or library, regardless of
implementation language, that implements a good CLI from which I can
borrow ideas?
I suggest you take a look at the philosophy underlying Microsoft PowerShell. From the idea of piping typed objects between commands to the consistency of its commands and argument syntax, I think it can be a source of inspiration.
You could try having a look at libcli :
"Libcli provides a shared library for
including a Cisco-like command-line
interface into other software."
http://code.google.com/p/libcli/
BTW - I forgot to mention that it is GNU Lesser GPL and actually used by Cisco in some products.
As for your last sentence/question, I'm particularly fond of zsh completion and line editing (zle).
Is there a good book or other references on Text User Interface Design? I am not interested in graphical user interfaces. I am interested in usability for good command line and scripting interfaces.
Your interface should follow the Rule of Least Surprise as described by ESR in The Art of Unix Programming. If your programm supports command line options, make sure they have the traditional meaning. Be sure to read the chapter about Tradeoffs between CLI and Visual Interfaces.
IBM developed a standard called Common User Access. The Common User Access Basic Interface Design Guide has been published in the BookManager format and in HTML here.
The guide was written as a standard for developing 3270 applications. In my opinion the most important parts are the function keys standard and a color standard.
I'd use a favorite program as a reference for something like this. What command line utility do you think has a good, efficient interface that you could model your program on? Use it.
Update: So I think I need to revise this a little. It was taken way too literally. Google and this site proved that the internet is very democratic. What is popular is replicated, linked to or reproduced in someway.
Given this, plus one's personal experiences with computers, I think it is feasible to derive a pretty good solution based on personal experience and consideration for the solution to be provided.
For example, vim is a great program. A lot of people use it and love it. But that type of interface is probably not going to work (at least well) for a version control system. But both interfaces are very elegant for the purpose they suite. On the other hand, the vim type interface might work for a section of the version control system -- the commit dialog for example.
Now, I know that vim is normally used for the "commit dialog" (by default) for svn (on unix based OSes). This is just an example of mixing two styles of interfaces to come up with a cohesive solution.
You should have a look at some of the ideas behind Ubiquity as well as some of the ideas Aza Raskin talks about, seems like the same kind of thing.
Say there is some functionality needed for an application under development which could be achieved by making a system call to either a command line program or utilizing a library. Assuming efficiency is not an issue, is it bad practice to simply make a system call to a program instead of utilizing a library? What are the disadvantages of doing this?
To make things more concrete, an example of this scenario would be an application which needs to download a file from a web server, either the cURL program or the libcURL library could be used for this.
Unless you are writing code for only one OS, there is no way of knowing if your system call will even work. What happens when there is a system update or an OS upgrade?
Never use a system call if there is a library to do the same function.
I prefer libraries because of the dependency issue, namely the executable might not be there when you call it, but the library will be (assuming external library references get taken care of when the process starts on your platform). In other words, using libraries would seem to guarantee a more stable, predictable outcome in more environments than system calls would.
There are several factors to take into account. One key one is the reliability of whether the external program will be present on all systems where your software is installed. If there is a possibility that it will be missing, then maybe it is better to do it inside your program.
Weighing against that, you might consider that the extra code loaded into your program is prohibitive - you don't need the code bloat for such a seldom-used part of your application.
The system() function is convenient, but dangerous, not least because it invokes a shell, usually. You may be better off calling the program more directly - on Unix, via the fork() and exec() system calls. [Note that a system call is very different from calling the system() function, incidentally!] OTOH, you may need to worry about ensuring all open file descriptors in your program are closed - especially if your program is some sort of daemon running on behalf of other users; that is less of a problem if your are not using special privileges, but it is still a good idea not to give the invoked program access to anything you did not intend. You may need to look at the fcntl() system call and the FD_CLOEXEC flag.
Generally, it is easier to keep control of things if you build the functionality into your program, but it is not a trivial decision.
Security is one concern. A malicious cURL could cause havoc in your program. It depends if this is a personal program where coding speed is your main focus, or a commercial application where things like security play a factor.
System calls are much harder to make safely.
All sorts of funny characters need to be correctly encoded to pass arguments in, and the types of encoding may vary by platform or even version of the command. So making a system call that contains any user data at all requires a lot of sanity-checking and it's easy to make a mistake.
Yeah, as mentioned above, keep in mind the difference between system calls (like fcntl() and open()) and system() calls. :)
In the early stages of prototyping a c program, I often make external calls to programs like grep and sed for manipulation of files using popen(). It's not safe, it's not secure, and it's certainly not portable. But it can allow you to get going quickly. That's valuable to me. It lets me focus on the really important core of the program, usually the reason I used c in the first place.
In high level languages, you'd better have a pretty good reason. :)
Instead of doing either, I'd Unix it up and build a script framework around your app, using the command line arguments and stdin.
Other's have mentioned good points (reliability, security, safety, portability, etc) - but I'll throw out another. Performance. Generally it is many times faster to call a library function or even spawn a new thread then it is to start an entire new process (and then you still have to correctly check/verify it's execution and parse it's output!)