RFC: command shell

[Enrico Weigelt]

Hi folks,

just an idea I'd find quite productive: builtin command shell.

Quite often I have to spend quite a lot time for looking
through menus and dialogs to find the right commands - often
for quite trivial things. (not just in LO, but gui-driven
applications in general, eg. gimp). I'm a traditional unix gui,
and like to have some shell where I can quickly type in command
(w/ tab-completion, maybe even scripting small functions).

Does anybody remember 'good old' AutoCAD (from early 90th) ?
It practically was command/shell driven, and the GUI just called
commands or added parameters (eg. selections, positions, etc)
to the command line.

Another, IMHO, good concept is the Oberon Operating System.
The essential concepts here are:

* everything is coded in modules (similar to pascal units)
* public (non-function) procedures without parameters can
  be called as commands. (the individual commands then need
  to fetch their parameters from global states, like selections
  cursor position, text behind the command, etc)
* in a simple case, you just write down the command in an
  editor and hit it with the middle button
* more intelligent objects (eg. "elems" - active objects within
  the floating text, or the Gadgets in the Oberon3 system) just
  call certain commands the usual way.

I'm just imagining an LO with similar capabilitites. Perhaps it
could look like this:

* an (optional) terminal window with status information (eg. cursor
  position, current text attributes, etc, etc) and an command line.
* when you start typing an command that requires additional data
  (eg. text range or positions), they can be automatically be filled
  in by the GUI (eg. when selecting some piece of text)
* addressable objects (eg. filenames, windows, text sections, etc)
  are supported by tab-completable
* GUI actions (eg. browsing through menus, or changing something
  via dialog boxes) show the corresponding commands in the terminal


What do you think about this idea ?


cu
-- 
Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Kind regards 

Enrico Weigelt 
VNC - Virtual Network Consult GmbH 
Head Of Development 

Pariser Platz 4a, D-10117 Berlin
Tel.: +49 (30) 3464615-20
Mobile: +49 (151) 27565287
Fax: +49 (30) 3464615-59

enrico.weigelt at vnc.biz; www.vnc.de