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A lot of folks on here are saying that this is cool but useless because there are better ways to click a button on a screen. If you read through their paper (h

by Corrado 17y ago

A lot of folks on here are saying that this is cool but useless because there are better ways to click a button on a screen. If you read through their paper (http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/projects/sikuli/sikuli-uist2009.pdf http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/projects/sikuli/sikuli-uist2...) you'll find more practical examples of what can be done with this type of system. One such example is to track real time images of a webcam pointed at a baby and using Sikuli to watch for a yellow dot placed on the baby's forehead. Another is to track movements of something across the screen; in this case a bus moving along Google maps. I agree that there are better ways to do most of the things in their examples and that they should probably re-work their videos a bit, but just because this system doesn't solve your problems the way you want it to doesn't mean its useless.

pmorici 17y ago
I'm kind of surprised by all the nay saying. Yeah, I get the one big pitfall of this but it seems like one of the better solutions to a class of inherently hairy problems.
thorax 17y ago
I don't think anyone is saying the technology isn't cool (and I see no one using the word "useless" but you). I believe most people are warning about the demonstrated technology for this task: > Sikuli is a visual technology to search and automate graphical user interfaces (GUI) using images (screenshots). As I said below, for personal scripting of known applications I think this GUI automation is great. But upon seeing it, we had all hoped to see a technology which would get over our biggest hurdles in GUI development/testing. As it doesn't sound like it would do that (well) for a number of reasons (i.e. localization, themes, OS/app versioning, design changes during development, coloring, etc), it loses a lot of its practical application appeal. It's still really cool technology and is a cool way to think about this kind of problem.

by Corrado 17y ago

pmorici 17y ago

I'm kind of surprised by all the nay saying. Yeah, I get the one big pitfall of this but it seems like one of the better solutions to a class of inherently hairy problems.

thorax 17y ago

I don't think anyone is saying the technology isn't cool (and I see no one using the word "useless" but you). I believe most people are warning about the demonstrated technology for this task: > Sikuli is a visual technology to search and automate graphical user interfaces (GUI) using images (screenshots). As I said below, for personal scripting of known applications I think this GUI automation is great. But upon seeing it, we had all hoped to see a technology which would get over our biggest hurdles in GUI development/testing. As it doesn't sound like it would do that (well) for a number of reasons (i.e. localization, themes, OS/app versioning, design changes during development, coloring, etc), it loses a lot of its practical application appeal. It's still really cool technology and is a cool way to think about this kind of problem.