Subj : Re: Windows vs Linux
To   : Spectre
From : boraxman
Date : Thu Apr 28 2022 22:17:22

 Sp> Ponder how is that different in Nix?  Sure you can feed your data
 Sp> through a variety of ad hoc tools, but it still really belongs to
 Sp> whatever it was created in.  Its not like you can do much to an SQL
 Sp> database with a text editor or spreadsheet... I will freely admit I have
 Sp> no experience with a nix gui so there might be something I'm missing.
 Sp> But the premise seem to me to be the same regardless of O/S or platform.
 Sp> Specific data types belong to specific applications... the only change
 Sp> will be how you can try to integrate that data into other uses.
 Sp> 
 Sp> Spec
 Sp> 

You can export from an SQL database, and take what you need.  It isn't necessary to store the data as text, only to be able to extract it, and that there is a way for programs to interchange.  PowerShell uses objects, which
is more powerful than converting everything to text.

The difference is whether you have a tool which can pull the data out in a format which another tool can make sense of, or not.  Although a particular tool may be required to pull out the data, if you can export it as a stream (text/objects) which any other program can use as a data source, then you can create a workflow where PDF's can be autogenerated using data fields from the source database, autopopulated.  Batch create human readable documents for operators to use as specifications based on validated master data.  Use existing tools to sign then, to verify digital signatures.

We have this to some degree.  You can in Word, use an Excel spreadsheet as a datasource, but this is an MS Office specific feature, and not quite as open ended.

With regards to the GUI, some Window Managers are quite configurable, so widgets, reporting and notifications can be built into the graphical environment.  This admittedly is a fairly niche feature, but one can create, within the "Start" menu programmatically generated entries, so workers can access a list of documents, functions, whatever you like without having to navigate any filesystem.  With the one I use, you can create any menu, which can do almost anything, simply by reading output of a program which generates the menu.  It can be done on the fly each time you read.

Imagine having in your start menu, one which said "future batches", and listed future production batches, in order, and simply selecting the menu opened up two documents, one the current specification to use, the other the batch records.  Updated each time you open it, with current dates/batch numbers automatically filled in.

I'm just throwing out ideas, but the vision is the actual computing environment moulded as the application.  Other operators could have hotkeys, they press it, a dialog box pops up, they enter some information, and records are updated in the backend.

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