11. Interfaces: User-Interface Design Patterns in the Unix Environment
All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.
—Leonardo Da Vinci
The interface of a program is the sum of all the ways that it communicates with human users and other programs. In Chapter 10, we discussed the use of environment variables, switches, run-control files and other parts of start-up-time interfaces. In this chapter, we’ll untangle the history and explain the pragmatics of Unix interfaces after startup time. Because user-interface code normally consumes 40% or more of development time, knowing good design patterns is especially important here in order to avoid a lot of false starts and time-intensive rewrites.
In the Unix tradition of interface design, ...
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