Re: Tiny typo in Manual
- Posted by CChris Jul 16, 2008
- 875 views
This ia also supposed to work with exw.exe, which is not supposed to be used on the command line, and will be invoked 95% of times using a double click on a .exw file. You can always Start -> Run... to launhch thru a command line with any switches, but this is clumsy. So, there has to be a command available inside the code. Command line is not the only way to launch a program.
This is getting crazy! 95% of the time double click? Wow. Where did that statistic come from? Did you do a poll somewhere I missed? I have never launched a .exw from the GUI. I did a quick poll in the IRC and no one there does either. I think you are all alone in launching from the Windows GUI.
In 10 years of office work, I have seen not a single persn launch from command line of any kind outside the computer assistance persons, except for very specific and temporary issues (change of version messups and the like). You may say that's not a poll. More of a census indeed.
We do program a lot, but hardly need to deal with the OS more than the strict minimum (importing or exporting files, for the most part). Believe it or not, this happens on the same planet.
Maybe a completed app is launched from the GUI, but this is a developer option as Matt has said. Besides, if you are delivering a completed app, you should really give your users the courtesy of a translated program which is much faster.
I thought the whole point of an interpreter is to release source that can be inspected by users if only for security reasons, examining a data processing algorithm (I work in statistics) or the like. Then, a translated executable may be delivered at the same time if speed is needed and user is not supposed to translate anything. I translate my code by alt-right clicking a file, after setting my explorer once for all to execute the appropriate commands in such case, for instance. If what we want is mainly producing executables, then any true compiled language is better than Euphoria.
Now, let's look at some other true window programs and how they deal with command line arguments. explorer.exe ... That takes command line arguments. One of them is the directory to start in. From the console you can type:
explorer.exe C:\
Now, to make this happen from the Windows GUI, you simply create a shortcut to explorer.exe and in the Target field you add to the end C:\ ... Now name your shortcut "Explore C:\". The point is the Windows interface works fine with command line parameters and was designed to. All you need to do is create a shortcut to your .exw program, add a -time (or whatever) and rename your shortcut to be "Benchmark MyApp".
Command line arguments are the way to pass optional parameter or alternate behaviors to your application. It's easy and it's the correct way of doing it, even on Microsoft GUI applications themselves.
Jeremy
<sarcasm>
That's probably why they all care to offer a graphic configuration panel of some kind. Simpler and less costly, I guess.
</sarcasm>
While what you say is technically true, I can guarantee you that it is not well known outside the professional developers' community, as large as it stands. My point is: we shouldn't need to perform otherwise unfrequent actions when simpler methods are possible at a low implementation cost.
I think the alternatives I suggested in my previous reply are quite reasonable on both sides, unless I am missing something.
CChris
