That being said, its goal is not to be 100% usable out of the box without reading any documentation. Rather, the goal is to offer a tool that, after a few hours of learning, can be used extremely productively and efficiently for the rest of your life. I have yet to see a single GUI file explorer that offers something that mc couldn't (and for that matter, I have yet to see a single GUI file explorer that offers a level of functionality anywhere near mc - for many features in mc, a GUI driven interaction would be detrimental to the tool).
Also, one thing to keep in mind when talking about interfaces is that "intuitive" is a very tricky word that doesn't necessarily mean what we'd like to think it means: http://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html
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To answer your specific point pertaining to mc:
> there's no way to interact with the app that might not also issue a command). Overall, it's left me with a vague anxiety I might accidentally delete a file.
You can press F1 for context sensitive help (you can also click on any interactive element in mc, if you really want to use your mouse!). And of course, every destructive action asks for user confirmation before being committed.
Thoughts like "what does 'RenMov' mean?" are totally normal (and also occur with GUIs for sure) - but knowing the answer takes you 30 seconds, and then you're set for life. Again, when you're considering the fact that this is a tool you're likely to use for thousands of hours over your life if you commit to it, it makes it a worthy investment. Sure, the OSX Finder doesn't take a few hours to understand - but the huge amount of time lost doing things in Finder.app (or explorer.exe or dolphin or nautilus or ...) that can be done in mc much faster pale in comparison to that learning curve.
A Curses GUI is still a GUI. Midnight Commander is a GUI interface to the file system that I only install when my mother has to shell into my server (it is definitely a good GUI, though.)
No, a curses-based UI is a text-based UI, not a graphical UI; it is distinct both from GUIs and from CLIs. It does share some characteristics with GUIs, sure.
That being said, its goal is not to be 100% usable out of the box without reading any documentation. Rather, the goal is to offer a tool that, after a few hours of learning, can be used extremely productively and efficiently for the rest of your life. I have yet to see a single GUI file explorer that offers something that mc couldn't (and for that matter, I have yet to see a single GUI file explorer that offers a level of functionality anywhere near mc - for many features in mc, a GUI driven interaction would be detrimental to the tool).
Also, one thing to keep in mind when talking about interfaces is that "intuitive" is a very tricky word that doesn't necessarily mean what we'd like to think it means: http://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html
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To answer your specific point pertaining to mc:
> there's no way to interact with the app that might not also issue a command). Overall, it's left me with a vague anxiety I might accidentally delete a file.
You can press F1 for context sensitive help (you can also click on any interactive element in mc, if you really want to use your mouse!). And of course, every destructive action asks for user confirmation before being committed.
Thoughts like "what does 'RenMov' mean?" are totally normal (and also occur with GUIs for sure) - but knowing the answer takes you 30 seconds, and then you're set for life. Again, when you're considering the fact that this is a tool you're likely to use for thousands of hours over your life if you commit to it, it makes it a worthy investment. Sure, the OSX Finder doesn't take a few hours to understand - but the huge amount of time lost doing things in Finder.app (or explorer.exe or dolphin or nautilus or ...) that can be done in mc much faster pale in comparison to that learning curve.