Uses and limitations

We have purposely kept guiLiner's operation as generic as possible, so that it may be used with many command line programs. By specifying the options that the program requires and some details about the program itself in an XML file (see below) almost any program should be able to be run though guiLiner.

Some of the most important features of guiLiner are:

• Significant flexibility to host a variety of command line programs
• Graphical display and setting of program parameters
• Rich variety of input interfaces to accommodate varied option types
• Easy identification of required, optional and conditional options
• Easy identification of options that have been set
• Display of option documentation
• Display of program help file (if available in HTML)
• Ability to save and open program parameters, preserving them between sessions
• Ability to save program output, including errors, to a text file
• Display of program progress/output and errors
• Good-looking: has a pluggable ``look and feel''

There are, however, certain requirements about the command line used by the hosted program that must be met for guiLiner to be able display the options and run correctly. As guiLiner development continues we hope to be able to relax these.

• All but one of the commands must have a flag associated with it. Often an infile is required by hosted programs but it should have no flag (and sometimes appear last on the command line)
• Only a single conditional sub options per option is allowed. This means that if using an option requires other options to be specified, one can be nested under it. However, if one of the sub options themselves requires suboptions, or if more than one is required, they can't be displayed correctly