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[MrWiggles]

So thats a no on the high five, deathworks?

[zwei]

actually, a command line interface sounds perfect! anybody wants to make a thread on the request forum?

If it was supported. I totally use one. Command lines have always been faster then guis.

Well, since we have dfhack, we could very well make commandline interface tool ourselves.

I have, already pondered this some time ago because i simply would love to have it too. It does not seem that hard to do ...

[ggeezz]

actually, a command line interface sounds perfect! anybody wants to make a thread on the request forum?

If it was supported. I totally use one. Command lines have always been faster then guis.

Well, since we have dfhack, we could very well make commandline interface tool ourselves.

I have, already pondered this some time ago because i simply would love to have it too. It does not seem that hard to do ...

Oooh, imagine the implications for testing.  You could conceivably make one script that tests every feature of the game.  Then Toady would have an automated integration test.

[Sizik]

Remember how in 40d it was a toss up weather escape, space or F9 would leave a menu?  And now it's mostly just escape or F9?

Just a nitpick: in 40d, only space and F9 were used to leave menus, escape only opened/closed the game options menu. In 0.31, F9 is no longer used. It's no coincidence that the menus that used F9 are the same menus that now don't work properly when you rebind LEAVESCREEN to space instead of escape.

[zwei]

...

...

Deathworks

I would not really use that wiki definition here, it basically amounts of hair-splitting in current state of discussion. As far as other stuff goes:

If we consider what is done with those ascii (map/minimap display, various icons). It is designed to convey graphical information and it does so fairly well.

If we talk about non-map components, they are mostly layouted in way similar to classic "click button" application. If it had gray background and hotkey-labels had raised borders cand were clickable, you would see very little difference from generic application.

Take norton/volkov/midnight commander: fully in text mode, yet it is application with gui. Curiously enough, if you add gray background and give buttons raised borders you get total comander .

[Deathworks]

Hi!

So thats a no on the high five, deathworks?

Sorry, but I am not too much a friend of getting stuck down in problems of vocabulary, but if we do have a useful and well-defined word, I am against people claiming that the definition should be different for no discernable benefit to our discussion.

I am also a bit saddened that people still want to fan animosity between the different groups - I may be wrong, but initial spark for the command line discussion does seem like an attempt to mock the keyboard-driven faction.

Let me explain again: I am not against people playing the game with the mouse if they so desire. I just don't want them to make claims about "everyone wants mouse support" or even attack those who do not want mouse support.

And let me explain another important aspect that makes things complicated: While I am not opposed to mouse support, I don't want to see it implemented in a way that damages the keyboard support. While you may wonder what the significance of it is, this is basically the point about the GUI: If you want a good interface, all components are designed to work together. A mouse-oriented interface needs to have menus and icons that allow you to make the best use of the abilities of the mouse. But those menus and icons are useless and maybe even clunky for interacting with things via the keyboard. Take your web browser, for example: It is very likely that you are controlling it using the mouse. It is also very likely that you can control it using the keyboard. It is very likely that you will find that using the keyboard is really difficult - and let me assure you, that I use the mouse as well to control Firefox. Because Firefox is designed to be used with a mouse. And this is what I am worried about - that people push for the entire interface to be changed to maximize the comfort and usability for the mouse accepting detrimental effects on keyboard usage.

Again, I don't want to stop people from enjoying Dwarf Fortress as much as possible, but I am not planning to play the martyr and sacrifice my own enjoyment of the game for the enjoyment of others.

Deathworks

EDIT: Zwei: That's the point - they are NOT clickable, so it is not a GUI in the common sense.

Anyhow, you are right that being nitpicky is not really helping the discussion. I think everyone understands what people are talking about.

[zwei]

EDIT: Zwei: That's the point - they are NOT clickable, so it is not a GUI in the common sense.

Well, my point is that as far as interface layouting and flow goes, they feel rather clickable-able (and thus close to being graphical).

But again, Terms, shmerms, lets just say we talk about Interface and be all happy, okay?

[Siquo]

I may be wrong, but initial spark for the command line discussion does seem like an attempt to mock the keyboard-driven faction.

That does not mean that it's not viable as an human-readable external-program API.
(G)UI and API are two different things. When playing, I'll still use the "hotkeys". But if there's a program that makes three-dimensional digging-designs easy, and can "upload" them into DF, I'd be a happy man. My repetitive strain injured arms will be happy, too.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

That does not mean that it's not viable as an human-readable external-program API.
(G)UI and API are two different things. When playing, I'll still use the "hotkeys". But if there's a program that makes three-dimensional digging-designs easy, and can "upload" them into DF, I'd be a happy man. My repetitive strain injured arms will be happy, too.

Use quickfort?

[Siquo]

Use quickfort?

Never knew it existed. Thanks. I'll probably need to use something else that feeds quickfort, though.

[narc]

Hum, and here I thought I was helping the discussion.

[...]Sorry, but I am not too much a friend of getting stuck down in problems of vocabulary, but if we do have a useful and well-defined word, I am against people claiming that the definition should be different for no discernable benefit to our discussion.

Well, my point was it's not really that well-defined. The term "GUI" is incredibly generic, no matter how much we, in the industry, would prefer it not be so. And WIMP (Window, Icon, Mouse, Pointer), which is what I'm assuming^[1] is what you are referring to, is not the only GUI paradigm in existence.

I am also a bit saddened that people still want to fan animosity between the different groups - I may be wrong, but initial spark for the command line discussion does seem like an attempt to mock the keyboard-driven faction.

I'm sorry you feel that way, mockery was never intended or desired; nor was it about fanning animosity. Obviously, I can't speak for anyone other than myself, but the initial spark^[2], as you put it, was intended purely as an example of a non-GUI Dwarf Fortress and nothing more.

Let me explain again: I am not against people playing the game with the mouse if they so desire. I just don't want them to make claims about "everyone wants mouse support" or even attack those who do not want mouse support.[...]

As an outsider, I can't say I saw anything like that; certainly I did not intend to write anything that could be so interpreted. I'd be very unpleasantly surprised if anyone advocated making the mouse the primary or sole method of interaction in DF, considering we all currently enjoy^[3] playing the game as it is, where the keyboard is the only reliable input device across all screens.

What I've tried to point out is that "keyboard-driven versus mouse-driven" is an axis orthogonal to the "character-mode versus graphics-mode" one, and the term GUI can be applied pretty much anywhere along both of these axes -- and everyone puts the cutoff for a GUI elsewhere. To me, DF is a GUI, and so are midnight commander, GNU screen, and Firefox. To someone else, midnight commander, screen, and DF may not qualify as GUIs, so if I were to use the term when speaking to this hypothetical other person, I could easily be misunderstood.

Anyhow, you are right that being nitpicky is not really helping the discussion. I think everyone understands what people are talking about.

This, to some extent, is my point: everyone throws around the term "GUI", but it's unclear to me what they mean by it. Some mean more mouse support, others mean... I don't know, something else. This is why I tried to explain that "GUI" doesn't mean anything specific, and includes what we already have in DF. The talk page on the wikipedia article referenced (and even the article itself, when read carefully) shows that the definition for "GUI" isn't really as cut-and-dried as one may think.

Incidentally, this post took far longer to write than it should have, so I'm going to be bowing out of this discussion -- I don't want to step on any more toes than I already have. I'll try to stay around and clarify misunderstandings, but there'll be no more "helpful" posts from me.

Footnotes:
^[1] -- My assumptions are just that: assumptions. I expect and encourage correction of these assumptions, should they seem wrong.
^[2] -- I'm assuming that's the initial spark; certainly, that's how the thread reads to me so far.
^[3] -- again, assuming everyone enjoys playing DF, because if they didn't, they'd just stop playing, wouldn't they?

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Narc: Ah, don't worry. I just felt that your post made the discussion unnecessary complicated. I didn't see you as someone going overboard for the mouse support thing. But I too want to end the terminology discussion, and merely wanted to say explicitly that I harbor no hard feelings or anything against. As you pointed out, we both enjoy the same great game.

Siquo: This viability was actually why I mentioned the original spark gave that impression. The aspect of automated testing, for instance, had caught my interest, but frankly, I already talk about too many things I am not really needed to talk about, so I didn't want to go into details about potential uses for a command line version.

Deathworks

[zwei]

I am also a bit saddened that people still want to fan animosity between the different groups - I may be wrong, but initial spark for the command line discussion does seem like an attempt to mock the keyboard-driven faction.

You should lighten up.

At least for me, command line is serious suggestion.

It is mostly because good commandline interface is vastly more rich. Especially when you add advanced features like autocompletition.

In many ways, it is very much unlike using keybinds. Think of unix commandline versus midnight commander.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Use quickfort?

Never knew it existed. Thanks. I'll probably need to use something else that feeds quickfort, though.

Thought that might be the problem =) I think there's a df designer map that can output quickfort CSV's, but I normally just hand-edit the CSV's using excel. Not hard at all with a little practice, and you can save your fort layouts for future use.

[Jiri Petru]

At least for me, command line is serious suggestion.

It is mostly because good commandline interface is vastly more rich. Especially when you add advanced features like autocompletition.

In many ways, it is very much unlike using keybinds. Think of unix commandline versus midnight commander.

It's also the extreme opposite of user-friendliness. On the list of priorities, the command line should be way below proper GUI. (Yeah, I'm using the term  )