FrontEnder (FEer for short) is a program that allows you to make wimp front ends for command line based programs without the need to do any actual programming. Using a very simple scripting system you can inform FEer which options you want to have and FrontEnder will look after all the complicated WIMP stuff for you.
Any *command you type at the command line can be done, in the wimp, via FrontEnder. So, for starters, this will save you time typing common commands. Also, if you use any command line programs such as wget, finger, whois, etc, they can be run via FEer with the advantage that you don't have to remember all the switches and you can take advantage of wimp drag and dropping to enter pathnames, filenames and other data. You can also use FrontEnder to launch other CLI programs such as FTP clients and have them pop up in a task window.
OK, here is something very simple. This is a frontend for Finger:
# Frontman script for Finger
# Script written by dsw (spriteman@email)
child_info
{
name: Finger Frontend
purpose: Makes Finger nicer to use
version: 0.01 (12 Jan 02)
author: Dave Watson
command: finger
wimpslot: 64
postexe:
}
Main_window
{
icon: writeable "Finger:" "" "" 200 402 left
icon: action "" "control" "" right
}
and most of the start of that was just to put the right information into the Info window. When run, the child app looks like this:
Larger scripts can produce more complex, multi-window frontends such as this one for wget.
You can download FrontEnder II here:
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Current version 2.0.5 (8th Jun 2003) ChangeLog |
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Current Child Apps are:
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