Category: Best Designed Interface in a Non-GUI App

Hey! We're Unix junkies, right? That whole mouse thing is just a fad anyway. The CLI is more efficient for a lot of things... and a good ncurses app is gonna run a heckuva lot faster than, say, Netscape. So this is your chance to nominate the non-graphical application you love most. The one with the interface that you wouldn't trade in for all the bloated graphics and icons in the world.

cdparanoia

[volsung]

Okay, so it's not interactive, but I love the status information it gives me at the console while doing batch jobs. I especially like the use of smiley faces to convey program state.

AJAX interface to EMBOSS

[fatdave]

This is an interface that describes all the inputs to the programs. It means that the one program can be linked to whichever frontend you wish be it web, javabean, corba or whatever. Just parse the program description file (ACD file) and you are in..

Have a look atThe EMBOSS project [sanger.ac.uk] for more details. ..d

Vim

[crumley]

Yes, I am risking a vi/emacs flamewar.

And, yes vi has been around forever.

And, yes there are a bunch of other vi clones.

But I use vim everyday, and I would hate to have to use something else. I am addicted to syntax highlighting, keyboard driven commands, and regex driven search and replace.

So call me old fashioned if you want, but I'm nominating vim.

Lynx

[ReadErr]

I nominate Lynx. The simple yet powerful webbrowser for the text mode.

Re:Vim

[Smack]

Are you serious? That has possibly the worst interface of any non-GUI app. Most people, upon accidently finding themselves in this editor, are forced to logoff because they can't even figure out how to exit the damn thing. UGGGH.

Of course the same exact complaint applies to emacs.

iptraf

[krital]

I nominate iptraf [mozcom.com]. It's an ncurses-based network monitor that does anything the best GUI network monitor could do, and does it better. If you haven't used it, you should try it out.

pine

[dangermouse]

pine's interface is great... a bit minimalist, but everything's there in terms of functionality. It could *maybe* be easier to use, but that'd be hard.

Mutt

[Mark Bainter]

While I love vim and think it has a great interface I'm already nominating it for best text editor. So I think mutt wins my nomination in this category.

midnight commander

[nathanm]

I haven't found a GUI file manager I like yet. So I run mc in a term window.

Re:Agreed. Kudos to pine.

[Kurt Gray]

pine is simple and logical. Going through a pile of email is easy, just tap the N key to see the next message, R to reply, Ctrl+X to send, D to delete (and by the way all these commands are highlighted at the bottom of the screen so you don't have to memorize odd keystrokes)

Pine makes it very easy to do your email over a remote shell session.

My only gripe with pine is how difficult they make it to make your reply-to address different from your username -- it's a hidden option!

pine also includes the pico editor which I nominated as best open source editor.

vi !

[arnim]

for being 100% usable without any meta-keys! doesn't matter what strange old-unix-box-keyboard You find in front of You, to what machine You telnet and what TERM You've set, it just works.

hjkl me !

Emacspeak

[hzo]

Emacspeak [vassar.edu] is a speech enabled interface
for computer users who are blind.

Written by T.V. Raman [cornell.edu] who is blind himself,
Emacspeak has opened the door of high performance
computing to many others who would be locked out otherwise.

Even the NSA is using it [vassar.edu]. So it has to be powerful :)

Emacspeak provides speech enabled web browsing,
spread sheets, speech icons, speech locking
(different kinds of text are spoken with different
voices, similar to text colorisation in Vim),
speech enabled handling of formulas, email, news
and so many more features. Check it out yourself. [vassar.edu]

Did you ever see a blind person playing Tetris? [mit.edu]

I did and this was the final kick that convinced me,
that Emacspeak is the most advanced
non graphical user interface available on this planet.
(It is IMHO even more advanced than many GUIs :)

I therefore nominate Emacspeak for /.'s
Best Designed Interface in a Non-GUI App Award.

Enjoy!
Hans



--

ncftp

[Anonymous Coward]

nuff said.

Re:Lynx

[The Light Eternal]

Hurrah! Lynx! The only browser that isn't absolutely frickin' bloated and dumb. :P
".. I like pork!"

Re:pine

[John Fulmer]

Agreed! Nothing beats the grrrrreat scent of PINE!

jf

Re:Emacspeak

[msk_moorthy]

I Concur. I think that Emacspeak is a great tool. Reads tables like a charm!

MC

[Uart]

Midnight Commander...
God this program makes my life sooooo easy. I can barely live without it

cat

[speck]

cat's interface is simplicity itself. Simply list the files, and voila, concatenation. Many (most non-GNU?) unices don't even have those confusing command-line options.

I was going to nominate echo, but I decided against it because most shells force you to escape apostrophes and the like. Arguably this is a problem with shells, not echo, but nonetheless, the user experience is less than perfect. Not so with cat.

speck

vim

[guacamole]

This peice of software is a joy to use.

Re:Vim

[guacamole]

Really? They must be idiots if they could not figure out that pressing F1 brings a help screen.

Re:Vim

[guacamole]

In fact the first screen that you see when you start vim explains you how to quit it..

dselect!

[Seth Golub]

dselect!

pine wins hands down!

[ccf]

I really think pine is the winner on this one. For one, we have a generation of college students that basically think that pine IS Unix. I used to work as a "Computing Assistant" at my college, and whenever I tried to explain to some user how to do something with their Unix account, they would say "You mean I do this in pine?" "No," I'd say. "You have to quit pine first." OK, so maybe that's not a Good Thing, but it is testament to the usability of pine that thousands of more or less clueless users are able to use it with no problem. And it is the only CLI app they use.

And it doesn't stop there. Pine has introduced all these non-techie college students to the beauty and power of telnet--they can check their mail from home now, using the exact same familiar program, with a simple one line command! Furthermore, now all these people know how to use a Unix based text editor: whenever I need to tell somebody to edit one of their files, I just tell them to use pico. "Oh!" they say. "I can handle this!" You try explaining to someone over the phone how to use vi or emacs. Good luck.

Therefore, because of the overall useability of pine, coupled with its spill-over into other areas of useability, I think it deserves the award for best non-graphical UI.

Clark

--
Finding a job shouldn't be work.

Amen

[Coretti]

Cornell University has used Pine for its "Traveler's Mail" for years. When the University wanted to move to a web-based semi-secure alternative, petitions were quickly passed around to keep the pine option alive.

It's quick, it's easy, and it's powerful. What more could you want?

Re:Vim

[Smack]

OK, "window management" doesn't exist in a telnet window. And most newbies don't know anything about job control. So yes, the only practical alternative for them is to logout.

Re:pine

[Lightstorm]

Pine is superb. One interesting thing is the way experienced users swear by it, but complete beginners appreciate it too.

Recently a user who was very keen on their flashy web interface mail account (which they used on Windows) happened to walk by whilst I was using pine. Their reaction? "You can forward a message just by pressing F and typing their address? That's so easy !!" People like not having to wade through dialog boxes to perform each operation.

-- David.

w3m

[patrikr]

...and once you get tired of unreadable tables and the like, download w3m! :)

--

Window management in a telnet window

[divbyzero]

For anyone who hasn't tried it, I strongly recommend the GNU program "screen". It provides window management, cutting and pasting, and session saving all in a standard telnet window.

I'd certainly make screen my nomination in this category.

--Div.
But my grandest creation, as history will tell,

Re:vi !

[divbyzero]

I must say that certain models of DEC keyboards which lack an escape key make vi a little awkward. You have to hit CTRL+] or F11 for escape, which just feels wrong.

--Div.
But my grandest creation, as history will tell,

Nethack/Moria/Angband (roguelike)

[GoofyBoy]

Set the controls to rogue-like commands and you could swear that the keyboard was built for playing these games.

Re:Mutt

[QuMa]

Mutt has no text editor! It spawns a text editor for all editing. It definately should not be in the text editor section. (Mind you, it's still the coolest editor).

Re:Vim

[algae]

I heartily agree! The keyboard nivana that is vim can't be matched by any other console app that I know of.

Vi renders at least a quarter of the keys on a 104-key keyboard no longer necessary;

Vi can be considered therapy for RSI;

Vi users have been clinically demonstrated to become 700% more productive using less(1).

--Alex

XTreeNet!

[empath]

The most awesome program for DOS since just about anything.