please computer | make me design

This is part of the please "computer | make me design" documentation.
Copyright 2010, Ivan Monroy Lopez, Stéphanie Vilayphiou, Alexandre Leray
and Ludivine Loiseau
See the file licences/fdl-1.3.txt for copying conditions.

Project

"please computer | make me design" was originally the source package for the "Screen Party" of April 22, 2010 at ESAPV Mons, proposed by Open Source Publishing. "please computer | make me design" is an introduction to the command line through graphic design, writing and concrete poetry. This package gathers reference texts, tutorials and a collection of scripts. It was created to facilitate collaboration, but also to be increased later on, for example through other workshops.

Getting Started

• Place this folder in your working folder
• Open a Terminal window
  • On MacOS:
  • Go to Applications/Utilities/Terminal
  • On Ubuntu:
  • Go to Applications/Accessories/Terminal
• Go into your working folder (telling the path to your terminal): $ cd /Volumes/your-hard-drive/.../your-folder/ (cd stands for 'change directory')
  • TIP The TAB key allows you to auto-complete folder names and file, so you do not need to know the hard disk tree and file names by heart!
• Go to the 'scripts' folder in the "PleaseMakeMeDesign" package $ cd pleasemakemedesign/scripts

Alternative way (Avoid writing the whole path by hand)

• Place this file in your working folder
• Open a Terminal window
  • On MacOS:
  • Go to Applications/Utilities/Terminal
  • On Ubuntu:
  • Go to Applications/Accessories/Terminal
• Type cd (space is important !)
• Find the package folder in the Finder
• Drag and drop this folder in the Terminal
• Press Enter

Tips

• ../ means higher directory in the filesystem hierarchy
• type -h or --help after the name of a program allows to view the help text
• type man program-name to read the manual for this program

Experiment

You can now test the command lines described in the file 'references/initiation.html' or 'recipes/dutch_way.html' Do not be afraid of losing files or launch a dangerous command. Besides the orders rm and >, nothing changes your files. rm deletes a file (use with caution because the file is deleted directly without going through the trash !). The command > saves the output in a file.

• To call a file located in a subfolder, type : $ my-directory/my-file.txt
• To call a file in a folder above, type : $ ../my-file.txt