Android

27883 readers

19 users here now

DROID DOES

Welcome to the droidymcdroidface-iest, Lemmyest (Lemmiest), test, bestest, phoniest, pluckiest, snarkiest, and spiciest Android community on Lemmy (Do not respond)! Here you can participate in amazing discussions and events relating to all things Android.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules

1. All posts must be relevant to Android devices/operating system.

2. Posts cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

3. No spam, self promotion, or upvote farming. Sources engaging in these behavior will be added to the Blacklist.

4. Non-whitelisted bots will be banned.

5. Engage respectfully: Harassment, flamebaiting, bad faith engagement, or agenda posting will result in your posts being removed. Excessive violations will result in temporary or permanent ban, depending on severity.

6. Memes are not allowed to be posts, but are allowed in the comments.

7. Posts from clickbait sources are heavily discouraged. Please de-clickbait titles if it needs to be submitted.

8. Submission statements of any length composed of your own thoughts inside the post text field are mandatory for any microblog posts, and are optional but recommended for article/image/video posts.

Community Resources:

We are Android girls*,

In our Lemmy.world.

The back is plastic,

It's fantastic.

*Well, not just girls: people of all gender identities are welcomed here.

Our Partner Communities:

[email protected]

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Could a uniform interface (like the command line) ever exist for smartphones? What could it look like? (lemy.lol)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In the desktop world, we have the option to use the command line: a uniform interface for a multitude of apps that would otherwise be very different when implemented as GUIs.

Using the same interface, I can move or edit files, cross out tasks on my to-do list, retrieve my password for my email account (using Bitwarden or pass), etc. All in the command line. The GUI for each of those are wildly different.

The other benefit is it is very easy to create a new command line app, as opposed to a GUI.

Is anything like this possible for the smartphone world (even if it doesn't or will never exist)? What would it look like?

Since smartphone typing is much slower, we can't simply reuse the command line. We'd need something different. An interface that can still support a various spectrum of different operations, yet ergonomic for a smartphone. What are your thoughts?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Well, the fact they emit objects doesn't really help that much with the user interface. This just means that the standard input and output of commands is (usually) more unified and parse-able. I really like the idea, and have seen multiple attempts at it including PowerShell, however none have reached the level of usability that the good old *NIX shells provide.

Id love to see an open source attempt at it

Here you go!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

It seems the difference stems from *Nix treating everything like a file (or stream) from day 1, while windows was built from DEC Alpha, which had a completely different approach.

(In the early 90's a group of DEC Alpha engineers were laid off, and Microsoft hired them. Technet magazine had an article (written by Mark Minasi I think), showing how clearly NT reflects the structure of Alpha. They may have been working on NT before that, but the influence of DEC was pretty clear).