Home » Technology » Amiga Software » Gui4Cli

Gui4Cli

© John Chandler

I've been covering a lot of thing related to the next generation of the Amiga recently, so time for a little change of perspective this month. Particularly for those who aren't more in touch with what's happening on the current Amigas these days, it's easy to forget that a lot is going on. There are some interesting projects out there.

One little gem I was introduced to last year, by the author (Dimitris Keletsekis) as it happens, is a freeware language/application called Gui4Cli. As the name suggests, it provides the ability to script powerful GUI front ends to CLI/Shell tools... but there's a wealth of extras that build upon the basic premise, once you've scratched beneath the surface. I can safely say it's become a very useful tool in my daily activities - coupling the power of shell tools with the ease of a GUI.

Gui4Cli is an interpreted, event-driven language equally suited to a variety of roles: front-end development, user interface prototyping and testing, quick and easy utility creation, even a 'visual shell'. The syntax is easy to write and understand, and non-programmers can pick up the basics very quickly. I had a working front-end to Richard Koerber's PalmLink shell tools within 30 minutes of using Gui4Cli... and it was on Aminet and the Gui4Cli website pretty soon afterwards! Now that's rapid software development in action.

In theory, being portable ASCII, a script could run on any platform supporting a Gui4Cli interpreter (only AmigaOS at present), an interesting thing to keep in mind for portability between AmigaOS, AROS, Amiga/Elate, Phoenix/Neutrino and even OSs like Linux or BeOS. The event-driven aspect means it responds to events such as mouse-clicks, menu selections, key-presses, sliders, even disk insertions or ARexx - pretty much everything the Amiga provides. Ports to other platforms might require support for slightly different things, such as REBOL, but the main core of the language is system independent.

The fact that G4C provides a user-interface which is clearly separated from the applications brings some powerful benefits, other than a portability issue mentioned above. For one, the developer can avoid the often messy process of GUI development using direct OS calls - the G4C language allows the interface to be developed using a much easier and more relevant syntax, which reduces development time and the chance of bugs creeping in. It supports the full range of AmigaOS, from screens and windows to Gadtools menus and gadgets, font sensitivity and window backgrounds, AppIcons, AppWindows and AppMenus,