ggui: One more candidate to SEUL software list!

[Roman Suzi <rnd@sampo.karelia.ru>]

It is called 'ggui' and appeared on Freshmeat today.

Half a year ago I was thinking about such kind of programs to eventually
appear for Linux. (I even was trying to write one myself, in Tcl/Tk, but
then dropped, because it's not so simple as it seems: my idea was even
more far reaching: I was trying to read man page or prg --help output and
parse it and thus automate what ggui does)


* Its a wizardizer of CLUI programs! *

ggui is written in... surprise here!.. Java. And is looking conceptually
(and even visually)  like Windows wizards. So far, it has a working
support only for xterm (and a demo).

BUT! I think it could be useful for educators! If it were not in Java and
had some text-based front-end as well, it could be used to LEARN UNIX
itself!

ggui asks user different options and then creates a command (and executes
it) with all those switches! It is interesting approach: to hide command
line options behind wizardish interface...

What do you think? Is it worth considering to add to SEUL-edu developers
(?) tools?

If it only was not in Java but in something less resource-demanding and
less hard to install!

BTW, ggui uses card-concept, which I will use in QZB. And it has a format
to represent cards. (Surprise here again: its ini-file-style format.)

Can anybody confirm my joyful impressions from this program? It seems  to
me, that it has great potential  to  things  we  are  speaking  about  in
seul-edu! Doug, what do you think?

(However, I don't like resemblance to Windows'  wizards... ;-)

In any case its clearly a candidate for SEUL-EDU development tools. (When
it will reach post-beta state from its pre-alpha now ;-)


Sincerely yours,
Roman A. Suzi

 -- Petrozavodsk -- Karelia -- Russia --
    -- powered by Linux RedHat 5.1 --

FEATURES of ggui:

1) This program actually creates a Wizard, just like the one shown in
   Winblow$ environments.
2) All the end-user input is done with the mouse.
3) All the real parameters are hidden from the end-user. They are defined
   inside the program and called automatically.
4) The data for displaying the various parameters on screen and calling the
   target-programm are stored in a simple to edit text file.
5) Because the defining of new ui for any target-program or correcting an
   already defined one has nothing to do with the actuall programming, there
   is no need of knowlkege any programming language. The only thing someone
   needs to know is how the parameters are defined.
6) The programm is the same for _every_ UI. That means we don't need to
   recompile the GGUI in order to display a different UI.
7) If someone has already installed GGUI, the only thing he/she needs to run
   a UI for another program is the new data file. This is ideal for novice
   users how need only to call the UI-program and don't need to know what's
   inside the data file.
8) The size of the various UIs is very small relative to the possiblity to
   write another ui-program for any target-program.
9) These wizards are interactive: that means you don't have to step over all
   the parameters for this target-program but only the desired one. It's
  ideal for "Advanced..." style wizards.

Authors of ggui
=======
Panos Katsaloulis  teras@writeme.com
http://www.bigfoot.com/~teras/ggui/