I started using computers in the '80s with my parents Kaypro 4. For those who aren't familiar with something that oldschool, it was very popular "portable" (it weighed like 40 pounds) computer produced in the early 80's by a now-defunct company. It ran an operating system called CP/M which was sort of a precursor to DOS although the two existed side by side for a couple years before DOS became the OS of choice. The CPU was the almighty Z-80! This was all cutting edge technology in 1985.
The point I want to make is that everything everyone is complaining about here is totally valid. This isn't 1985 anymore, it's 2007. Command lines aren't used to interact with the OS in 2007, GUIs are. In 1985 anyone who used a computer knew how to operate from a command line. The same can't be said today. People like Black Tiger and also anyone in a younger generation don't know shit about a command line. I do, but that's only because I started using computers in 1985 and GUIs didn't exist outside a few very small novelty markets (the archaic Macintosh Plus hadn't even been released yet, the Apple II was still Apple's top selling machine). But just because I know how to use an obsolete interface doesn't mean I think modern programs should be designed to utilize it.
The argument that Mednafen is a multi-platform app is irrelevant. GUIs exist for virtually every OS in 2007, certainly every OS that Mednafen has been ported to. X Windows/X11/what-have-you has existed for probably around 20 years or more. Nobody should be releasing command line applications/utilities to the general public in 2007, save perhaps for "root-level" system utilities used by system and network administrators. And even that is debatable at this point. Especially ones that take 346 precise command line arguments to function properly.
Coding a simple GUI would be the easiest part of programming an emulator. Assuming that everyone who will be using your program not only knows about, but is eager to use the command line is not a very logical assumption these days.
Personally, I will probably not ever do much with Mednafen unless someone gets with the program and writes a modern interface for it. It's just too big of a f*cking hassle.
You used CP/M? That's classic
(to no one specific or to most - whatever fits)
If people don't want to use mednafen because it doesn't have a GUI - their loss. She didn't write for GUI huggers. She wrote it for linux and made the source cross compatible. She only offers the win32 binary as a courtesy for windows users. If someone wants to make a GUI for it or a frontend (separate program) then so be it, but it's not her responsibility or duty to provide it when all the necessary requirements to run the emulator are there.
Anyone realized MAME is the same way? The official MAME team doesn't put out the platform specific builds like MAME32 (which I sure is what you guys run for PC). It's not the authors/team responsibility to create the GUI package for each platform, they leave that up to other people who want to add such features (such as MAME32 guys). Mednafen is no different. You want a GUI for mednafen or other open source GUI-less apps, go solicit some windows or mac programmers.
And on the other side of the argument, the command line shell isn't archaic or dead, it's just an alternate interface to an operating systems (Apple happens to hide it for its OS, but it's there) and application. It has a purpose and a function. It may not serve the needs for most, but saying it's stupid or invalid or only leet programmers use it, or in this day and age all apps should be GUI drive, it just ignorant. Not everyone program needs dynamic interface of a GUI system. I'm sure as hell not going to go out of my way to setup a GUI for a general app that doesn't need it. Why would I want the overhead of opening an app, going to "file", "open", find the file, enter in my parameters in the appropriate boxes - when I could just type "insert somefile.ext sourcefile.ext $9000" or "extract_script source.iso dest.txt $1E0800" or whatever. I'm usually using multiple apps in the same directory I'm working in. And when I'm not in the command prompt, dragging and dropping onto a batch file works just fine.
Also, for you guys who don't run mednafen because it's console app... I don't even enter in the command prompt mode to run my games with it. I've associated mednafen with the file types that I want to run with it. I just double click the CUE file for the CD game I want to run and it runs. Same with roms - pce, gb, nes, ws (wonder swan / color), etc. Mednafen has a config file that holds all the settings. There's no need to run the emulator with the same option commands everytime. I already have the gampad, scanline, res, and such setup. Nothing else to do but run the game. So for me, I see no need for a GUI with it. It's not like it's a web browser or word processor.
