Corn Puffs box misinformation

From: r. 'bear' stricklin <red_at_bears.org>
Date: Sun Oct 13 00:05:00 2002

On Sat, 12 Oct 2002, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:

> I NEVER said that there weren't third party products available.

Hang on, it wasn't my intention to get your dander up.

> I ALSO NEVER said that there weren't also tasks that were more suited to
> the "desktop" than to the CLI. Those are obvious. The query was for
> which tasks would be good examples to show that the CLI was still needed,
> or at least still useful, when running Windoze.

The problem with that, IMO, is that none of the tools that ship with
Windows, CLI or otherwise, are particularly robust, or even suited to any
but the simplest of the most basic tasks. In the general case I think the
point that is more useful to illustrate is "use the appropriate tool for
the job". Using two "notepad" windows side by side is clearly NOT the
appropriate tool to compare two files. "comp" may not be it, either,
depending on the nature of the differences and how you intend to utilize
the information about those differences, but still it's a lot better
suited than the former example.

Microsoft may even provide a graphical version of 'diff' as a part of
Visual Studio. The last time I used MSVC, I was not what you might call a
"sophisticated user", though, so I'm not sure about that.

> Does that program compare two files?
> The parts of it that were successful in loading made no mention of file
> compare. (It reported an "internal error")

You lost me. Which program? FileMerge is an app that ships with the
developer option for NEXTSTEP and provides a combination of functionality
offered by the standard UNIX utilities 'diff' and 'patch'.

I hope you weren't trying to execute the .tiff screen capture that the URL
pointed to, as an application binary...

> File compare was merely an example that the "desktop" in MICROS~1 OS's
> does NOT provide all and every capability that had previously been
> provided in the CLI.

I don't think anybody would argue that it does. Clearly the CLI doesn't
provide all the capabilities offered by the GUI either, but I know you
weren't saying that.

I mean, Photoshop on the Mac supports multiprocessor systems, even though
MacOS 9 doesn't. Clearly it would've been easier on Adobe if it had, but
that feature is present in Photoshop just the same.

It's all about the tools!

ok
r.
Received on Sun Oct 13 2002 - 00:05:00 BST