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>GUIs, on the other hand, are much better about showing a user what options / commands are available. In general this is only the case if the user is browsing
by mahkoh 8y ago
>GUIs, on the other hand, are much better about showing a user what options / commands are available.
In general this is only the case if the user is browsing and not looking for anything in particular. That is, when the user is trying to learn about the program in general.
If you're trying to find anything in particular, that thing might be hidden in an options window in a submenu of a submenu somewhere. The only effective way to find it is to google for the functionality and to hope that someone else has already asked the same question. This is my experience with Inkscape.
A well written, flat manpage can have much better discoverability than a GUI with poor or hard to search documentation. Bad manpages are of course considered harmful.
- iforgotpassword 8y agoYes this is a big plus for CLI. I don't know how many times "something --help | grep keyword" has immediately solved a problem while for GUI apps you always need a google search. I mean it's not really that bad, you always have the browser open anyways and 99% of times someone had the same problem before, but still, it just feels cumbersome.
- carlmr 8y agoYeah, I agree, and a good --help might not be included in every CLI app, but then again a lot of GUIs are also barely discoverable if the options have bad names and no tooltips.
- simongray 8y agoIn most GUI apps on the Mac you can do this kind of thing through Help > Search..., though. Not sure about other platforms, but I sure use that feature a lot in e.g. intellij.
- dotancohen 8y agoI was going to mention PyCharm. The Jetbrains editors (intellij) are about the only GUI app that I've ever replaced a CLI app with and been happy. Their discoverability and documentation played a big part in that.
- rijoja 8y agoAnd this was the hands down best feature of unity, they provided a way where you could search within these menus... So sad to see the project fail due to reactionary criticism. Now the functionality still sort of exists in Ubuntu 18 but not by far as well made as in 16.
- chuckdries 8y agoThis continues to be the feature that keeps me using macos for work - the search field in the help menu searches all the menu options, each of which displays its own shortcut key beside it
- TeMPOraL 8y ago> A well written, flat manpage can have much better discoverability than a GUI with poor or hard to search documentation. Bad manpages are of course considered harmful. Related, it's sad that not only users - including many developers - can't be bothered to sit down and skim a manual, but we're actually legitimizing this as an industry. Or, let me rephrase it: bothering to read is a superpower. Having enough patience to skim a man page can be enlightening, and I do actually feel like I gained +2 levels of wizardy by developing the habit of reading Info pages.
- pjmlp 8y agoIt doesn't get better with the newer generations favoring YouTube tutorials over reading.
- PurpleRamen 8y agoGUIs have manuals too, and usually they are searchable. Additionally there are GUIs around with the ability to search in the GUI itself. Usually it's limited to Option-Dialogs to find the specific setting, or menus to find the specific entry you wanna call. But in generally it's only a matter of effort how accessable something is.
- reitanqild 8y ago> Additionally there are GUIs around with the ability to search in the GUI itself. Usually it's limited to Option-Dialogs to find the specific setting, or menus to find the specific entry you wanna call. JetBrains tools, Netbeans (ctrl- i) and VS Code (ctrl - shift - p) all has this in the main interface I think.