Coping with the local shell is a perennial issue. It processes whatever is typed at the shell prompt before G’MIC even sees the command line string. Tutorial Land has a Custom Cheat which attempts to address this issue. Since shell prepossessing is a source of frustration for many a beginning script writer, I am thinking of moving some form of this cautionary way up front: to Start Here. Since the Technical Reference links to this page, its readers can benefit from such an early warning — so long as they follow the link.
Possibly, before offering such a link, the Technical Reference should have a terse warning of its own. Something to the effect of:
- Be advised that the examples in this Reference are subject to shell preprocessing; successfully executing many examples calls for being familiar with your shell’s special characters and escaping them accordingly.
- Alternatively, consider writing a small Custom Command to encapsulate the example. This bypasses most shell interaction. The tutorial outlines the basic approach.
Perhaps this is too verbose for the Technical Reference. But something like this could live in the more verbose tutorial guide, and the Reference can link to it.