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A Guided Tour of the Microsoft Command Shell
jpkunst writes "Ryan Paul at Ars Technica provides an in-depth, 13 page review of the new Microsoft Command Shell (Monad). (The beta release can be downloaded for free from Microsoft.) From the conclusion: 'Despite my initial skepticism, I am deeply impressed with MSH technology, and I am legitimately excited about the future of the Windows command line.'"
We must have a working implimentation of this shell in Gnome immediately.
I propose we call it Gonad.
It will be the dogs bollocks.
It's nuts
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
Backslashdot
Specializing in Unix bashing (somewhat of an ironic statement)
the text-based shell is the nexus of computational control and the point at which proper articulation of will can transform commands into consequences Which leads to two questions : who wrote this shit, and were they getting paid per syllable?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
A witty saying proves nothing.
- Voltaire
It's worth mentioning here that the real strength of the pipe is not "what you can pipe", but "what you can pipe things from, and to", and the fact that you can daisy-chain them together as far as you like. There are literally thousands, maybe tens of thousands of little tools and widgets that you can pipe information into and out of to achieve various effects. Regardless of what new things the MSH pipe can do, the unix world has a significantly larger toolbox.
Mike Hoye
Just a few days ago, there was another article on Slashdot about how Ballmer wants to "storm Linux." If they can convince *nix people that Windows has a powerful CLI, this will do much to suck them in... it is the "eye candy" for true geeks.
The article author starts to say this himself: My biggest frustration with MSH is the low quality of the actual shell interface. On my Linux system, I am extremely dependent on line editing keyboard shortcuts that simplify manipulation and alteration of command line input. MSH has very few line editing shortcuts, and extremely limited support for tab completion.
And I remember when CP/M was all the rage... *sigh*
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Everyone knows that "msh" really stands for "Microsoft Hell".
And once people realize it is crippled there will be a gsh (Gate Shell) and a bsh (Ballmer Shell) as equally handycaped as the msh. A legal suit will follow from Google for gsh but the bsh will last.
Wouldn't it be easier just to get a copy of Linux and call it MS-Linux? I thought Microsoft thought all of UNIX/POSIX was crap and you didn't need a shell?
Are you talking about the new Vista UI?
:-)
In that case, that's a visual style that's changing only the aspects of the UI Windows XP changed. Windows border styles and new flashy button hover effects, etc. Think of it as a different theme/skin, not a way for them to change the UI design guidelines. "OK" will still always be followed by "Cancel", group boxes will still group UI elements with a relation, menus will still be part of the applications and not the dsektop, combo boxes will still be recommended only in "little space" situations, and so on.
Actually, Microsoft has released preliminary design guidelines for Vista, and I was surprised to see how much can be directly applied, and is even recommended to be applied like that, to Windows XP.
Also, even in Windows Vista, just like in XP, can you still apply the Windows 2000 look & feel via a flip of a switch. That if anything should show that all they're really doing are mostly just applying new skins to sell their product, and not coming up with new guidelines that indeed would alienate their broad customer base. If I'm at some user that have applied some simple settings, I often lose myself in thinking I'm working on a Windows 2000 workstation when I'm in reality on XP.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
There's far more of a difference between Windows XP and Windows 2000, then just a graphical skin. The methods for accessing a handful of configuration settings windows has altered and in some cases, those configuration modules have changed significantly on their own.
To say that there won't be changes beyond simple "Graphical skins" simply does not hold with the historical perspective of the sweeping changes with each major iteration of Windows.
Windows 3.11 to Windows 95 to Windows 98 to WindowsMe, there were underlying configuration changes that made learning the "new" OS important.
Windows NT 3.5 to Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 to Windows XP also included significant configuration setting alterations that were far more drastic then the "Consumer Level" Windows Operating Systems.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I didn't get very far into the article before they got to the "we do things for you" part. Maybe I'm alone in this belief but I absolutely hate it when a language/shell/application will do things for me.
For instance (from the article):
MSH features the typical data types found in most other modern languages: strings, integers, arrays, and hash tables. When you enter any of those kinds of values at the command line, MSH will echo them back.
msh> "blah"
blah
msh> 5
5
By comparison, in the Bash shell, expressions are always treated as commands and the echo command must be called explicitly if the user wants to display a value at the command line.
If I want an echo statement I WILL TYPE echo! I don't want the software to ASSUME (make and ass out of me) if I make a typo!
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I thought a Monad was when you lost one of your gonads. Or was that mononad.
I've studied the new UI quite a bit, and you, sir, are clueless.
.NET object, everything inherits from another object. The entire thing is texture based, like OS X.
.NET, is to have a framework to build off for the future. Like .NET, too, the new UI is well-written. I've been programming for it for half a year now and it blows Windows XP out of the water. It even tops OS X in a few areas.
Are they keeping things like "OK" and "Cancel? Yes. Are you able to change the look back to Windows 2000 (well, sort of). Yes. They do things like this so people don't need to totally retrain.
Is the user interface anything like Windows XP, under the hood? No. God no.
The entire thing has been rewritten from the ground up. Everything is a
What this means is they CAN make drastic changes down the road by simply changing a few objects. Everything will inherit down. Ever notice that buttons can be totally dissimilar from one app to the next, and all MS has been able to do is (for example) but a blue highlight around them? That's because the UI has been so cripped.
The new UI is simple, beautiful and brilliant. Is it completely different than Windows XP? No. It's not intended to be. The goal, like
so shouldn't the command prompt for msh be something like this?
$>
or maybe a few more...
$$$>
ah, what the heck...
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$>
And once people realize it is crippled there will be a gsh (Gate Shell) and a bsh (Ballmer Shell) as equally handycaped as the msh. A legal suit will follow from Google for gsh but the bsh will last.
bsh> developers
developers
bsh> developers
developers
bsh> developers
YEAH!