The Text Pistols

“It’s hard to argue that Unix is anything other than a textual
environment. Commands are text-based and manipulate information
primarily as text. Human and machine readability overlap with a
clarity unknown to users of other OSes. So how well do GUI
‘desktops’ or desktop environments play with this fundamental Unix
approach? One could well envisage some kind of GUI which could
follow the Unix model of pipes and information flow, and there may
well be such a project buried deep beneath the sludge of abandoned
projects on SourceForge, but the end result would still rely
heavily on textual selection.

“Unix-based OSes, particularly with an overwrought and in some
ways elegant GUI such as Mac OS X do have a tough time integrating
the two approaches, and the command line is very much treated as a
tolerated, yet rather distant older relative. The default terminal
app seems clunky and washed out in comparison with the brighter,
broader desktop…”

Complete
Story