Viewglob 2.0.4 review

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Viewglob is a utility designed to extend Bash and Zsh when used in windowing environments

License: GPL (GNU General Public License)
File size: 0K
Developer: Stephen Bach
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Viewglob is a utility designed to extend Bash and Zsh when used in windowing environments. Viewglob project has two parts:

1. A tool that sits as a layer between the shell and X terminal, keeping track of the user's current directory and command line.
2. A graphical display which shows the layouts of directories referenced on the command line (including pwd).

The display reveals the results of file globs and shell expansions as they are typed (hence the name), highlighting selected files and potential name completions.

It can also be used as a surrogate terminal, where keystrokes typed in the display are passed to the shell. Files and directories can be double-clicked to insert their names and/or paths into the terminal.

Generally people use Unix in a fundamentally different way than, say, Windows. There are desktop environments such as Gnome and KDE which emulate the Windows feel by providing point-and-click folder navigation and whatnot, but I find that for the most part I just juggle between terminals.

The command line is truly powerful, allowing for a level of control unreachable with a mouse. Instead of trying to improve on a usage pattern which is almost parallel to Unix, Viewglob is a small step towards making the shell itself more relevant in a windowing system.

Here are some key features of "Viewglob":
Convenient. No longer will you compulsively ls after every cd.
Reassuring. You can see the potential ramificiations of a command as you type it.
Accomodating. Difficult-to-type filenames need no longer be tab-completion guess work.

What's New in This Release:
Bug fixes:

Fixed build on OS X. Thanks to John Magolske.
Update to new version of autotools (you probably don't care about this).

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