• redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com
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    1 year ago

    Who need GUI apps when you can do these things on CLI:

    • view image: imcat my-image.png
    • watch video, even YouTube: mpv --vo=tct "https://youtube.com/watch?v=BBJa32lCaaY"
    • browse the web using modern Firefox engine: browsh
    • listen to your Spotify playlists: spt play --name "Your Playlist" --playlist --random

    and perhaps many more I’m not currently aware of…

    • imben@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      While this is not a serious post I’m going to take it seriously, so here are some of the reasons:

      Nobody can easily remember the precise file name and if you don’t get the first letters right you’re screwed(did I mention capital letters matter?)

      Wtf is --vo=tct? No sane person is remembering all of that (same goes for the rest 10000 parameters and options)

      Again, waaayyy too many parameters, who remembers their playlist name? There is no autocomplete here, you’re on your sad own in your sad little room with your sad little feelings, because there’s no one there to tell you the song’s precise name, because computers are assholes and don’t hate you.

      So why GUIs? Because they make computers seem like friendly fellas which actually care about you and give you options, tell you the available functions(without deciphering a 50 pages manual if done well)

      • sanpo@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        If you take it seriously, then at least your complaints should be reasonable, not meme-worthy.

        Autocomplete is a standard feature in CLI nowadays, so no need to remember everything.
        And parameters usually have names chosen to make the most sense and to be memorable (e.g. vo = video output).

        • propaganja@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Serious person here.

          Can autocomplete fill in a YouTube URL or Spotify playlist name? Can I browse the list of what’s available and filter, drill down, poke around according to my whimsy?

          Or if I’m accessing a local file, how do I find that one video of my cat named VID-004326.MP4?

          Can I autocomplete the parameters themselves, which are betimes lengthy and unwieldy to type out?

          Even if it’s possible, and I’ve mastered every arcane parameter necessary to do it, is it really faster / more convenient than doing it through a GUI?

          Maybe there are good answers to the above questions—I don’t know and would love to find out—but they and many more like them are surely reasonable and far from meme-worthy, or else I’m missing something huge.

          • sanpo@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            In which situation would you need an autocomplete for YT URL? Online-only services designed for a web browser are crappy examples.
            But anyway, yes, Spotify clients written for CLI do provide autocomplete and filters. I never tried YT, so I don’t know.

            Or if I’m accessing a local file, how do I find that one video of my cat named VID-004326.MP4?

            And how do you do that using GUI? The exact same way, looking blindly and playing random videos (or name the file properly in the first place).

            Can I autocomplete the parameters themselves, which are betimes lengthy and unwieldy to type out?

            Obviously, yes, that’s pretty much the entire point.

            Even if it’s possible, and I’ve mastered every arcane parameter necessary to do it, is it really faster / more convenient than doing it through a GUI?

            That mostly depends on the user, but often: yes, it is. Otherwise we’d all have moved on from CLI ages ago.

            Please don’t take this as a personal attack, but assuming CLI is some unwieldy, outdated idea requiring mysterious arcane knowledge to use effectively only shows ignorance.
            It also hurts new users, because it discourages them from trying it for bad reasons.

            • flop@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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              1 year ago

              And how do you do that using GUI? The exact same way, looking blindly and playing random videos (or name the file properly in the first place).

              Thumbnails? Or maybe searching through find, which is not as straight forward as something like search in dolphin.

              Also “name the file properly in the first place” is such an off putting mentality. I want my computer to simplify work by doing things for me, not need to properly catalog every random video because of the failures of my UI.

              • AustralianSimon@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Name the file properly, say that to a photographer with 3 cameras and an auto export. This is what thumbs and a gui are built for.

                • BURN@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Same. When I’m importing 10-15k photos from a 3 day trip (motorsports photography) there’s no way to name all of them effectively. A GUI is a requirement for photo management imo.

            • AnonStoleMyPants@sopuli.xyz
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              1 year ago

              The main annoyance with CLI is that it is not nearly as easy to discover things with it. With a gui you can just click through each setting and see what is what. With CLI you can’t really, you gotta read the manual which definitely can be cumbersome. And even if the commands do try to make sense it is still very common to forget the abbreviation unless you use it often (or write it down). At least I do. I use git semi occasionally and keep forgetting amend.

              I like CLI. But it does have its shortcomings.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Imcat is awesome, Debian and had a news reader with the same name.

      MPV refuses to play any YouTube for me I suspect it has something to do with their new restrictions on YouTube DL.

      Browsh looks absolutely magnificent until I actually try to use it, It seems like submitting form pages or maybe JavaScript is broken

      • redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com
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        1 year ago

        You’ can try installing yt-dlp. That one is still actively maintained. YouTube also actively trying to broke it, so the one available in debian repo might be out of date.

        • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          looks like it is using DLP backend, didn’t read the whole error

          [ytdl_hook] ERROR: [youtube] BBJa32lCaaY: Unable to extract uploader id; please report this issue on  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using  yt-dlp -U
          [ytdl_hook] youtube-dl failed: unexpected error occurred
          Failed to recognize file format.
          

          Let’s hope youtube hasn’t finally ground the project permanently

          • flop@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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            1 year ago

            At the risk of being a ‘works for me’ guy, I tried downloading and playing a couple random videos and it worked on version 2023.07.06. So hopefully yt-dlp is alive and kicking!