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From: kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)
Subject: Re: Decent ADA compiler on a Mac
Date: 1995/04/07
Message-ID: <1995Apr7.132823.9608@eisner.decus.org>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 100070396
references: <3kb9rs$622@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>  <dewar.797191164@gnat>
organization: LJK Software
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1995-04-07T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <dewar.797191164@gnat>, dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

> But in fact if you read these in more detail, both agree that the ideal is
> to have a nicely integrated environment with both visual and command line
> capabilities.
> 
> Does anyone really disagree with this? My original post which set off this
> discussion complained about the Mac because it had NO command line facility.

In principle allowing a command line interface should not cause pain.

In practice, however, cases where a command line interface is provided
one finds the developers of the tool frequently using it as an excuse
for skimping on the IDE.  "Oh, you want to refer to a file elsewhere
on your system?  Either navigate with standard file selection boxes,
or enter a full path specification.  That's why we have a command line
interface."

Full path specifications are _incredibly_ foreign to a Macintosh
user, and navigating with file selection boxes is the pits.  Find File
works well enough, but really an equivalent should be built into the
IDE to make things smooth.  (My understanding is that Find File was
a shareware buyout anyway.)

In summary, I guess I would be willing to allow a command line interface,
providing the IDE developers were forbidden to use it for their own work.
That might provide the necessary pressure to ensure the IDE is complete.

Some of us have so much experience with command-line operating systems
(myself included) that we lose our grasp of what might be.