Re: Graphical units conversion program?
John Hasler wrote:
Why would you want a graphical units program? What would it so that
'units' doesn't do? I'm not attacking you: as the maintainer of units I
honestly want to know.
I'm not the original poster, but thought I'd respond.
The program is not intuitive. For example, I ran "units", and it
responded thusly:
enjae[westk]:/home/westk> units
2084 units, 71 prefixes, 32 nonlinear units
You have:
Okay. What do I have? Is this like one of those text adventure games,
and it's telling me I have nothing? Or is it asking a question? If so,
is it asking for a unit of measurement, like kilometer or foot, and can
I use abbreviations, or is it asking an amount, like 10 or 45, or what
exactly is it asking or telling?
Of course, I was able to do "man units" and quickly find the answers to
those questions, but the point is, the program itself did not provide
the information I needed to use it. I was forced to turn to the man
page. And I still don't know what the "2084 units, 71 prefixes, 32
nonlinear units" means (I didn't bother reading more than a minimal scan
of the man page).
Then when I wanted to leave the program, I tried "q", then "quit", then
"bye", then "exit", then finally Ctrl-C which worked.
As I said, not intuitive.
That's not to say that it's not a great tool, and has its uses. But I
can certainly see how adding a curses interface or a GUI, perhaps being
able to turn off these interfaces with a command-line switch or config
file, would make it much more appealing.
--
Kent West (westk@acu.edu)
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