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0 pointsJeffSnazz2y ago0 comments

With all these command-line parser libs, I'm surprised there aren't more libraries that automatically generate a graphical interface for them. Would be super useful for e.g. ffmpeg, cc, curl, etc. Especially for people unfamiliar with the program....

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8 comments · 5 top-level

indymike2y ago· 2 in thread

Early on (late 90s and early 00s) there were a lot of command line to gui kinds of tools (there were also a lot of tries at web-ifying, CLI tools also). I can't remember the name, but there was even a terminal emulator that tried to present commands as dialogs.

* There is no enforced standard for commands other than using a file name to invoke them.

* Different languages and frameworks have different and multiple ways of parsing command lines. For example Gooey (a python gui tool) works with scripts written with the argparse library but dodes not work with optparse.

* The terminal is not the shell. That means that to present a gui, you'll have to launch something that runs outside of the terminal to present the gui.

* It's common for developers to write command line tools with out understanding the shell and os's input and output system beyond reading and writing files. I routinely have to teach jr developers about stdio, stderr, pipes etc...

That said, there's great potential to take advantage of shell autocomplete files to make better guis for commands: https://blog.deepjyoti30.dev/tab-autocomplet-cli-apps . Someone probably already has done this...

JeffSnazzOP2y ago

The idea is that you'd build it into whatever command-line parsing tool you use. Presumably this would be runtime-specific. And yes, the entire point is to escape the terminal and rely on native interface constraints (e.g. disabling/enabling) to reflect the usage of the tool.

indymike2y ago

> whatever command-line parsing tool you use

Hmm. Writing a wrapper that uses autocomplete definitions might be more useful... There's also the approach of Zenity that gives you the ability to create GUIs from shell scripts. When you do have a gui from parser tool, it can be quite nice (like Python's gooey).

PurpleRamen2y ago· 1 in thread

It doesn't even need to be a full GUI, just having an interactive interface for weaving commandline-spells on the fly would already improve the access. But then again, this would demand a more complex interface than a commandline. I'm not sure how easy this is implementable with your average shell&terminal.

mooreds2y ago

There are some reasonably complex git tuis. https://github.com/extrawurst/gitui is one

blackbear_2y ago

There is for Python: https://github.com/chriskiehl/Gooey

CubsFan10602y ago

https://github.com/Textualize/trogon

arccy2y ago

a good shell completion function is like 80% of the way there, it can even include descriptions for flags, and the smart ones will know about exclusions and such

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