Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> Well, currently a program's arguments are just a giant blob of text. The
>> OS does nothing more than hand it over to the program, which may then
>> interpret them in any way it pleases. This is LCD; it works for
>> everything, but it's not terribly sophisticated.
>>
>> How about if, say, the program could somehow "tell" the OS what
>> arguments it actually accepts? (In the same way a program file usually
>> contains metadata to "tell" the OS all kinds of other stuff about it,
>> such as linking information.) Then the OS could report invalid argument
>> names without even needing to bother actually starting the program
>> itself. And just think of the auto-complete possibilities.
>>
>> Hey, let's go one better. The majority of CLI arguments are either
>> on/off switches or filenames, right? Well what if we *tell* the OS what
>> things are on/off switches, and that their default state should be? What
>> if we *tell* it which things are supposed to be filenames? (And whether
>> the name in question *should* or *should not* exist when the program is
>> run? Or whether it should be a *file* or a *directory*? Or maybe even
>> the name of another program?)
> 
> You don't need a whole new OS for that.
> 
> Recent versions of bash come preconfigured for smart autocomplete. Random
> example: 
> apt-get remove <tab> completes package names you already have installed.
> 
> Or look at fish (my current shell). It colors the stuff you type in real
> time. Type ls --srot and it will show red, so you know you
> mispelled --sort.

Does it work if you add some arbitrary new program?

-- 
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Invisible wrote:
> Does it work if you add some arbitrary new program?

...and you write the bash/zsh/fish completion script, yes :)

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> Does it work if you add some arbitrary new program?
> 
> ...and you write the bash/zsh/fish completion script, yes :)

OK, fair enough then.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> Except that (say) GIF supports animation and only 256 colours and 1-bit
>> alpha, whereas PNG supports only single images, but with 24-bit colour
>> and 8-bit alpha, and TIFF supports something else again...
> 
> Um, yes? So? You don't think you can abstract that?  (BTW, GIF supports
> more than that, as you can change the color table after each row. FWIW.)

Not after each row. After each animation frame.

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