I don't want to be a downer, and this is definitely a very cool product indeed, but doesn't converting command line tools into GUI apps sort of rob them of a lot of their usefulness? The reason I prefer to use the CLI (besides ergonomic reasons and having a horrific $5 mouse) is that I have a consistent interface which can be manipulated (pipes, redirection) and also are scriptable and repeatable. These GUI versions dont have any of that?
No CLI app is being robbed of anything, this is a layer over the top.
GUIs are very valuable because they can do things CLIs cannot, like show you at a glance what operations are available, promote the standard usecase of the CLI etc. Stuff that takes a bit of reading and clever typing with a CLI.
This tool allows you to quickly write a highly specific GUI that is using CLI app in the background.
Not a downer at all! You're absolutely right that you lose power by strapping a GUI onto a CLI. In Gooey's case, that loss of power is actually the point! :)
This is something that's called out in the main Gooey documentation, but omitted in this this guide: Gooey is made to solve the problem of getting usable software to non-techie people's hands without having to write layers of GUI code or change how we'd write software. The main idea that spawned Gooey was that it could act as an "impedance matcher" of sorts between how I want to write software as a developer (CLI), versus how end-users want to consume software (GUI).
This exactly. Just being able to throw a quick interface at a powerful CLI would save the day for your excel-lover boss, or your mom. And save you hours of searching a bad-but-with-GUI alternative
Even as a software developer I find many CLIs annoying. People say to read the man pages, but I don't want to waste that much time. In some cases, I much prefer having a simple tool that hand holds me and tells me what to do.
Of course, for scripting and automation you need non-CLIs. And a lot of the time it is faster to use a cli tool, but, for the niche tool that I don't use that much (like mpv or curl), a simple GUI is nice.
