[buug] GUI wrapper for CLI programs?

Claude Rubinson cjr at grundrisse.org
Fri May 20 09:51:43 PDT 2011


On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 09:05:33AM -0700, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> On Fri, 20 May 2011 10:52:43 -0500
> Claude Rubinson <cjr at grundrisse.org> wrote:
> 
> Claude> What I'd like to do is develop a GUI wrapper around this suite
> Claude> for non-commandline use.  This application would basically be a
> Claude> commandline prompt plus menu bar and tool bar.  From the menu
> Claude> bar, the user could click "Analyze -> $FOO_TEST" and a dialog
> Claude> box would pop up for the user to enter the parameters for
> Claude> $FOO_TEST.  When the user clicked "Ok", the application would
> Claude> build the commandline string, echo it to the main window, and
> Claude> execute it.  The idea would be to gently introduce the user to
> Claude> using the commandline but hold the user's hand through it.
> 
> Claude> This seems like a fairly obvious idea, so I'm wondering if such
> Claude> a solution might already exist?  It does need to be
> Claude> cross-platform (Win, OSX, and Unix).
> 
> Python/Tk ?

I realize that I can write it myself but I'm thinking that maybe
somebody else has already done the heavy lifting.  There are a bunch
of tools for writing "quick and easy" GUI frontends to commandline
programs; what I haven't yet found is one that also embeds a command
prompt.  (So maybe what I'm proposing is a wrapper around a terminal
program.)

> Without the x-platform requirement, I'd say Emacs :-P

Emacs is cross-platform!  But if the target population was Emacs
users, I wouldn't have any need for a GUI frontend in the first place.

Claude



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