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RTF

Member

Registered: 2004-04-26

Posts: 27

Hotkey Shell (hosh)

I first mentioned this project in this thread:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=4706&start=105

So I'm continuing the discussion here. No screenshots yet(there ain't much to see) but I will keep a little development log.

v0.12 -- It runs and shows my one test program(ls) and a title bar at the top: "hosh v0.12 -- press ? for help" Pressing "q" to run ls brings up the first page of options, which can't be used or selected yet. Page/key overflow adds a message at the right of the title bar: "+/- to navigate" God was it painful to XMLify the options - there's like 50 of them for that program. I'm hoping for some community support in adding new ones

RTF

Member

Registered: 2004-04-26

Posts: 27

Re: Hotkey Shell (hosh)

v0.13

It runs ls now and prints the output; you can press a key to exit afterwards.

Still not ready for a release. I'll wait on that until option selection and the file browser are completely implemented.

Dusty

Schwag Merchant

From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada

Registered: 2004-01-18

Posts: 5,986

Website

Re: Hotkey Shell (hosh)

One question, how will "hotkeys" be different from short (one letter?) command aliases? Will it be that hotkeys can be reused depending on the mode (file management, etc)?

Dusty

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RTF

Member

Registered: 2004-04-26

Posts: 27

Re: Hotkey Shell (hosh)

Hotkeys in this program are very modal; the number keys and alphabet are tightly linked to what's on the screen, and are more flexibly configured than a simple alias. The layout is set up so that "reading" what key must be pressed is a matter of mapping the vertical layout of the text to the horizontal one of the keyboard; it's truthfully not so different from a GUI, except that you are pressing a "real" button and not a "virtual" one, and that makes it much faster.

When browsing for example, you'll see something like this:

1) .
2) ..
3) ourdirectory
4) file1
5) file2
6) another.file
7) yet.another
8) more.fileage
9) almost.done
0) tenthfile
<more>

and if you have more than 10 files, you press + and - to go to new pages. The same interface, only replacing "1234567890" with "qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm" is used for selecting program options. (Dvorak users may change this easily) I don't know if one is really better, but I suspect more browsing time is spent selecting rather than reading file descriptions, while the opposite is true when selecting options.

If I get it to later versions it will become possible to construct pipeline commands of equal complexity to those of the CLI :twisted: