From http://news.u32.net/articles/2006/07/31/shell-vs-file-manager:
Would you rather click on files or type at them? This is the root of a dichotomy that has existed ever since day one (day one was some time in mid 1964 according to my sources). Except for TwoDudes' short-lived FinderShell, I have never seen a program that effectively combines the strengths of each environment. Why must we choose?
Here's a stupid trick that makes it easier to move data from mouse mode to finger mode and back. Add the following to ~/.bashrc or equivalent:
Now open opens pretty much anything:
opens mswd.doc in OpenOffice or AbiWord (whatever your default is).
opens the QuickTime clip in a movie player.
opens a new Nautilus window showing the current directory.
opens a new browser window showing this blog.
And copy and paste manipulate the clipboard:
* paste (with no arguments) prints the clipboard to the terminal.
* Select some text in a text editor and then run paste > newfile to save that selection to a file.
* copy bigfile copies the contents of bigfile into the clipboard.
* copy *.log copies the contents of all log files in the current directory.
Of course, you can combine these tricks:
converts the contents of the clipboard to upper-case.
will rot13 the clipboard.
More in blog post...
Would you rather click on files or type at them? This is the root of a dichotomy that has existed ever since day one (day one was some time in mid 1964 according to my sources). Except for TwoDudes' short-lived FinderShell, I have never seen a program that effectively combines the strengths of each environment. Why must we choose?
Here's a stupid trick that makes it easier to move data from mouse mode to finger mode and back. Add the following to ~/.bashrc or equivalent:
alias open=gnome-open alias copy="xclip -i" alias paste="xclip -o"
Now open opens pretty much anything:
open mswd.doc
opens mswd.doc in OpenOffice or AbiWord (whatever your default is).
open tt.mov
opens the QuickTime clip in a movie player.
open .
opens a new Nautilus window showing the current directory.
open http://u32.net
opens a new browser window showing this blog.
And copy and paste manipulate the clipboard:
* paste (with no arguments) prints the clipboard to the terminal.
* Select some text in a text editor and then run paste > newfile to save that selection to a file.
* copy bigfile copies the contents of bigfile into the clipboard.
* copy *.log copies the contents of all log files in the current directory.
Of course, you can combine these tricks:
paste | tr a-z A-Z | copy
converts the contents of the clipboard to upper-case.
paste | tr A-Za-z N-ZA-Mn-za-m | copy
will rot13 the clipboard.
More in blog post...
