This is an open request to the Cocoa development community. I use the command line frequently from day-to-day because it affords me much greater power and flexability than the simple mouse-driven “Finder” application. Unfortunately it’s ugly, and difficult to learn/remember. I’d love to see an application that could make keyboard-driven computing mainstream in the modern age. Who says a “command line” is the only way to view keyboard-driven interfaces?
Desired Features:
- standard Cocoa graphics/interface
- can be driven with mouse, but also fully functional with 100% keyboard access
- current directory displayed in window title
- typing a command reveals its description/syntax from the “man” database for quick reminders
- when typing arguments, each argument’s description is made visible, and others are visible in a dropdown
- many plain-english aliases pre-configured (e.g. “list” == “ls”)
- command result can be viewed as icons (shown above), or selectable text (like Terminal)
- command line apps like “vi” open in a new window, and appear in dock as a separate application
- “help” menu contains command hints, relevant “man” pages, documentation, etc
- option to record commands to a script file
Thoughts? Suggestions?
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Adam O'Hern is an industrial design consultant specializing in visual brand languages, and has designed products ranging from laptops to power tools, classroom toys to bathroom fixtures, and robots to lint rollers. He has published with 3DWorld Magazine, CGTuts+, and Luxology, and works with Josh Mings of SolidSmack.com on EngineerVsDesigner.com. |
