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Re: [News] Desktop GNU/Linux a Better Mac Than Mac OS X

Verily I say unto thee, that Chris Ahlstrom spake thusly:
> After takin' a swig o' grog, Roy Schestowitz belched out this bit o'
> wisdom:

>> I must be doing something wrong. My KDE desktop is very nicely
>> integrated overall. Drag-and-drop interfaces are a joy!
> 
> I much prefer pipes.
> 
> How else can I find 22 related e-mails in my .maildir, count them,
> and copy them to a holding directory, in one line of code?

Thunderbird has a nice search feature, where searches can be saved as a
virtual folder that keeps in sync with the search parameters.

However, there are still many things for which scripting just makes more
sense. Is there any GUI "app" that could do this, for example?:

First script:

. Monitor a directory "videos" on an NFS share
. Try to make a list of 4.3GB of videos, or wait for more to appear
. Use mkisofs to create an ISO of those video files, once available
. Move that ISO to a second directory "ISOs" on the same NFS share
. Delete the "burned" video files
. Rinse, repeat

Second script:

. Monitor a directory "ISO" on the NFS share
. If there's an ISO, check for a blank DVD
. If there's no blank DVD, eject the drawer and wait 30 secs
. If there's a blank DVD, burn the ISO
. Verify the burn succeeded before deleting the ISO file
. Rinse, repeat

So basically all I have to do is drop my ISOs and video files on the
server via NFS, then every now and then pop through with a blank DVD.

The "ease" of using GUI apps is all very well, but there are simply far
too many permutations of tasks to be covered by any one application.
Using scripts allows one to accomplish /exactly/ what one wants, exactly
the way one wants to do it ... every time. This is especially true when
one is automating tasks and/or working on a large number of files, but
frankly I'm happier working that way even for trivial tasks.

For those who like doing things somebody /else's/ way, I suppose gooeys
are "good enough".

-- 
K.
http://slated.org

.----
| "At the time, I thought C was the most elegant language and Java
|  the most practical one. That point of view lasted for maybe two
|  weeks after initial exposure to Lisp."   ~ Constantine Vetoshev
`----

Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.25.11-60.fc8
 00:28:33 up 10 days,  9:24,  3 users,  load average: 0.19, 0.24, 0.38

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