Eddie

[Christian Brunschen]

On 13 Sep 2007, at 15:35, William Ehrich wrote:

> Christian Brunschen wrote:
>
>> Terminal.app certainly has some deficiencies; but what  
>> Terminal.app should be
>> is simply /better at being a terminal emulator/; no more, no less.
>
> That depends on its purpose.

No, that is its purpose.

> If it is to be a nostalgic emulation of your grandfather's VT-100  
> in the style of <http://www.theonion.com/content/news/ 
> ford_reintroduces_model_t_line>, to show the awkward limits of line  
> buffer access from a glass TTY, it does a reasonably good job.
>
> I use it for keyboard access to the operating system

That, to offer keyboard access to the OS, is its fundamental purpose.

> and compiling simple utilities, etc.

Well, for developing code, Mac OS X has Xcode. Yes, even for simple  
utilities.

> The convenience of a combined text editor and command interface,  
> like MPW and Eddie, is more useful for that than imitation of a  
> historical artifact.

That may be the case, but since that isn't the purpose for which  
Terminal.app is supplied, that isn't really Terminal.app's fault.  
Yes, MPW and Eddie offer you an experience that you find superior,  
for the purpose of developing software. But again, Terminal.app is a  
general-purpose terminal emulator, not an IDE. The application's name  
(Terminal) might offer a hint to that effect.

Note also that Eddie offers 'Bash integration'; but Terminal.app  
offers general VT-100 emulation, which means that where Eddie can  
perhaps take shortcuts because it knows that it will be precisely the  
bash shell that is run in its terminal-esque windows, Terminal can  
and will successfully run and display any program that uses standard  
VT-100 control sequences.

Different purposes.

Bicycles aren't great on the motorway. But that really isn't the  
bicycle's fault. Then someone discovers motorcycles and proclaims  
'this is what bicycles should have been!' – but that statement is and  
remains wrong, because bicycles were never intended for motorways in  
the first place. So whereas indeed, motorbikes are better on the  
motorway, that's simply because bicycles and motorcycles are built  
with different goals, different purposes in mind; and trying to  
squeeze or extend one from its own niche into the niche of another is  
not going to give generally satisfactory results.

In this case, you've wanted something like MPW. There hasn't been  
anything, so you've made do with Terminal.app for your terminal  
needs, some text editor for your text editing needs, etc; this hasn't  
given you the workflow you've wanted. Eddie does give you a workflow  
which is much closer to what you want. But that only means that Eddie  
is something that is closer to what you need than Terminal.app is,  
and that for your purposes, Eddie is a better choice; it still  
doesn't mean that Terminal.app 'should have been' anything different  
from what it is.

If you had said 'This is what I wish I had had instead of  
Terminal.app' everything would be fine. It is simply your assertion  
that somehow your need dictates what Terminal.app should be, when  
your need goes well outside of what Terminal.app's documented purpose  
is (hint: the application's name offers a clue), that I have an issue  
with.

Terminal.app's name and its documentation talk about accessing the  
Unix part, Darwin, of Mac OS X. Nowhere that I can find does it  
mention being a tool for development or offering any IDE-like  
facilities. You've had to make do with a tool that isn't suited for  
the job for which you've tried to use it. But again, that isn't the  
fault of the tool. If you need to hammer in some nails and all you  
have is a screwdriver, sure, you'll use the screwdriver's handle to  
bang in the nails, possibly even with some success; but that doesn't  
mean that when you acquire a hammer you can say 'this is what the  
screwdriver should have been!', but 'This is a much better tool for  
the job I am doing!'.

> -- Bill Ehrich

// Christian Brunschen

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