When adding a new Terminal Command, recommend Run Script

[vitor]

This is a suggestion, and not a request. It references a recent thread.

It’s not uncommon to see novice users use a Terminal Command node when they should really be using Run Script. The ones we know about are the ones that bump into problems or limitations because of it (like the aforementioned thread), but I bet many others unnecessarily suffer from a worse experience¹ for no reason other than not knowing better.

It makes sense. These novice have no real concept of a script but they’ve run commands in a Terminal before. To them, the Terminal is not a gateway to other tools in the system; the Terminal is the tool — a single app that can do many things.

I think it’d be beneficial if the Terminal Command configuration sheet — or at the very least its help page — would mention that most of the time what the user wants is a Run Script, not a Terminal Command.

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1. Having a Terminal open and needing to close it every time

[Andrew]

Good idea...

 

[deanishe]

I'd be a bit more explicit, tbh. Mention that the command is thus completely outside of Alfred and can't pass anything to subsequent elements.

 

Perhaps link to a proper explanation on alfredapp.com.

 

Edited June 12, 2017 by deanishe

[Andrew]

@deanishe it does say that in the very last subtext - I'll break that out to a separate paragraph.

[Andrew]

Here we go:

 

[vitor]

I’d remove the comma in “To run a command without Terminal, and use the…” and would maybe left-align (to be consistent with the rest of the interface).

 

Other than that, the message seems clear and prominent enough.

[Andrew]

@vitor I used the comma is because the middle of that sentence is optional... i.e. "To run a command without Terminal, use a Run Script action.".

 

Anywhoooo, not spending any more time on this  

 

(well, apart from fixing the pre-release broken resizing of that config sheet)