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This also demonstrates were CLI excels and where GUI's fall short. With the GUI your just stuck digging for the correct option and tab. With the CLI you can cre

This also demonstrates were CLI excels and where GUI's fall short. With the GUI your just stuck digging for the correct option and tab. With the CLI you can create aliases or shell scripts to make wrappers for complex CLI options. Not to mention building custom openssl.cnf configs.

layer8 4y ago
An actual GUI for openssl tasks could be hugely more user-friendly than the one depicted here. If anything, it demonstrates that a GUI interface could be superior (for non-scripting use, obviously), because the depicted version is meant to illustrate the CLI experience.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
behnamoh 4y ago
Maybe that's also why visual programming never took off. There's just a sense of "power and control" that comes with raw text that's unmatched in GUI apps. I agree with your point about CLI. At the same time, I wish we had more GUI *inside* CLI. For example, an interactive and pretty MAN page that's not just text, but has clear borders, boxes, buttons (with keyboard shortcuts), and uses different colors for different sections (e.g., command description, arguments, examples, etc.)
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  I think there's a strong case for a lot of systems having both a GUI and a CLI, because there are purposes each excel at, and a user may want to be able to switch between them depending what they are doing.
  - behnamoh 4y ago
    I think VSCode's command palette is close to this idea. I wish MS Word and other apps would add something similar.
dmart 4y ago
Funny, when I looked at this my first impression was how much nicer the (hypothetical) GUI looked to use, with all of the functionality easily discoverable without digging through man pages and rewriting your intentions in terms of obscure flags. To clarify, I'm not saying the GUI is actually better. But I wish we could bring some of those conveniences to the command line experience (way better autocomplete and command discovery).
- tuckerpo 4y ago
  Yeah, I'd prefer a GUI in this instance over going back and forth to the man page and trying to remember all of the options and all of their formats.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    It really comes down to "is this a one-time task you're trying to figure out" or do you want the options set once and never touch it again in a script. With the CLI at least you can cut and paste the options from somewhere else.
    - solar-ice 4y ago
      Microsoft solved this for a lot of their server stuff by having a "show me the powershell command" at the end of most wizards. If you want to write a script, going through this process is usually a good idea.
      - 0daystock 4y ago
        Google Cloud does this also - shows the equivalent gcloud command line to execute APIs available through the UI console.
        imwillofficial 4y ago
        This is awesome
    - 4y ago
amelius 4y ago
We need a CLI equivalent for the web, and for mobile.
murermader 4y ago
This does not demonstrate that at all. This just demonstrates how bad a UI can be, if no thought goes into it at all. Not everything has to be visible all the time, settings can be grouped, and the user can be guided through the settings piece-by-piece, instead of just putting every option next to each other. This does not have a GUI because making a good GUI is alot of work + the target demographic are more technical people that are able to use the CLI, so why put in all the effort?
- codedokode 4y ago
  Many of the settings are unnecessary, for example, input file format switch: I would prefer a computer to figure out this for me. And there is no need for all those "display X" switches because you can display everything at once.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    The whole input format to me looks like trivial thing. Start with extension, if not look for relevant headers, if not throw it at asn1.
peddling-brink 4y ago
When your GUI is a man page with checkboxes, it’s easy to say that it falls short. I think that good UIs increase discoverability, add guardrails, and make operations easier for people with different levels of familiarity. Neither the linked GUI nor the OpenSSL command line tool make the grade imo.
jchw 4y ago
The interpretation here is implying that this GUI exists to demonstrate good GUI design. It instead exists to demonstrate what it would look like if you directly mapped the APIs of OpenSSL into a GUI 1:1. This is not the ideal way to do that, of course, but I would argue that with really good APIs, if you did do something like that, it would wind up being quite passable. How openssl is today is probably not so bad for what it is, though. The GUI design here might be doing it a disservice by intentionally not having as much hierarchy. But this is actually a really bad argument for why CLIs are better. That’d be like arguing that closets are better for organization than shelves because when you haphazardly throw everything from your shelves into your closet, your room looks cleaner when the closet door is shut.
agumonkey 4y ago
you re giving me a second wave of ideas regarding UX
commandlinefan 4y ago
> demonstrates were CLI excels and where GUI's fall short In theory it could be such a demonstration, but openssl's command line interface is... pretty bad, too.
wruza 4y ago
CLI is useful for something you know and want to automatically reproduce. But it sucks if the thing you want to do is one-shot or too rare. You read the docs, few tutorials, type the command, aaaand the task is done, the knowledge is gone. I’d just sit there with a black screen if every time I wanted to change a wallpaper I’d have to type out something like `sudo desktopctl -X --ignore-duplicates -f aspect -c 180 ~/path/to/image.jpeg`.

layer8 4y ago

An actual GUI for openssl tasks could be hugely more user-friendly than the one depicted here. If anything, it demonstrates that a GUI interface could be superior (for non-scripting use, obviously), because the depicted version is meant to illustrate the CLI experience.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

behnamoh 4y ago

Maybe that's also why visual programming never took off. There's just a sense of "power and control" that comes with raw text that's unmatched in GUI apps. I agree with your point about CLI. At the same time, I wish we had more GUI *inside* CLI. For example, an interactive and pretty MAN page that's not just text, but has clear borders, boxes, buttons (with keyboard shortcuts), and uses different colors for different sections (e.g., command description, arguments, examples, etc.)

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
I think there's a strong case for a lot of systems having both a GUI and a CLI, because there are purposes each excel at, and a user may want to be able to switch between them depending what they are doing.
- behnamoh 4y ago
  I think VSCode's command palette is close to this idea. I wish MS Word and other apps would add something similar.

dmart 4y ago

Funny, when I looked at this my first impression was how much nicer the (hypothetical) GUI looked to use, with all of the functionality easily discoverable without digging through man pages and rewriting your intentions in terms of obscure flags. To clarify, I'm not saying the GUI is actually better. But I wish we could bring some of those conveniences to the command line experience (way better autocomplete and command discovery).

tuckerpo 4y ago
Yeah, I'd prefer a GUI in this instance over going back and forth to the man page and trying to remember all of the options and all of their formats.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It really comes down to "is this a one-time task you're trying to figure out" or do you want the options set once and never touch it again in a script. With the CLI at least you can cut and paste the options from somewhere else.
  - solar-ice 4y ago
    Microsoft solved this for a lot of their server stuff by having a "show me the powershell command" at the end of most wizards. If you want to write a script, going through this process is usually a good idea.
    - 0daystock 4y ago
      Google Cloud does this also - shows the equivalent gcloud command line to execute APIs available through the UI console.
      - imwillofficial 4y ago
        This is awesome
  - 4y ago

amelius 4y ago

We need a CLI equivalent for the web, and for mobile.

murermader 4y ago

This does not demonstrate that at all. This just demonstrates how bad a UI can be, if no thought goes into it at all. Not everything has to be visible all the time, settings can be grouped, and the user can be guided through the settings piece-by-piece, instead of just putting every option next to each other. This does not have a GUI because making a good GUI is alot of work + the target demographic are more technical people that are able to use the CLI, so why put in all the effort?

codedokode 4y ago
Many of the settings are unnecessary, for example, input file format switch: I would prefer a computer to figure out this for me. And there is no need for all those "display X" switches because you can display everything at once.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  The whole input format to me looks like trivial thing. Start with extension, if not look for relevant headers, if not throw it at asn1.

peddling-brink 4y ago

When your GUI is a man page with checkboxes, it’s easy to say that it falls short. I think that good UIs increase discoverability, add guardrails, and make operations easier for people with different levels of familiarity. Neither the linked GUI nor the OpenSSL command line tool make the grade imo.

jchw 4y ago

The interpretation here is implying that this GUI exists to demonstrate good GUI design. It instead exists to demonstrate what it would look like if you directly mapped the APIs of OpenSSL into a GUI 1:1. This is not the ideal way to do that, of course, but I would argue that with really good APIs, if you did do something like that, it would wind up being quite passable. How openssl is today is probably not so bad for what it is, though. The GUI design here might be doing it a disservice by intentionally not having as much hierarchy. But this is actually a really bad argument for why CLIs are better. That’d be like arguing that closets are better for organization than shelves because when you haphazardly throw everything from your shelves into your closet, your room looks cleaner when the closet door is shut.

agumonkey 4y ago

you re giving me a second wave of ideas regarding UX

commandlinefan 4y ago

> demonstrates were CLI excels and where GUI's fall short In theory it could be such a demonstration, but openssl's command line interface is... pretty bad, too.

wruza 4y ago

CLI is useful for something you know and want to automatically reproduce. But it sucks if the thing you want to do is one-shot or too rare. You read the docs, few tutorials, type the command, aaaand the task is done, the knowledge is gone. I’d just sit there with a black screen if every time I wanted to change a wallpaper I’d have to type out something like `sudo desktopctl -X --ignore-duplicates -f aspect -c 180 ~/path/to/image.jpeg`.