On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 7:14 PM, Coda Highland
<chighland@gmail.com> wrote:
on Windows, you can shell out to
PowerShell instead of cmd.exe to get a native dialog.
Windows XP doesn't have PowerShell.
On UNIX-based systems, at least, you could wrap around the `dialog`
command, though of course that adds a dependency.
The main idea of "alert" is to be ready to run everywhere,
without asking user to install any dependency.
I would point out that there are better alternatives than popping open
a shell window on almost all platforms, though.
In what aspect these alternatives are better?
IMO, the decision which one is better is a matter of taste ;-)
I agree that "alert" should give user a choice to use what he wants.
there's xmessage, gmessage, kdialog, zenity, xdialog, shellgui, gxmessage, and gtkdialog that I
can find on a quick search; most users will have one of the first
three installed already.
I doubt that it would have 100% *nix systems coverage.
Meanwhile, a terminal emulator exists on every system,
including *nices on low memory devices.
Fortunately, "alert" is configurable enough to do what you want.
"alert" already supports "zenity" and can easily support other
dialog-like utilities.
You can also set priorities to reflect your personal preferences, so
xmessage/gmessage/kdialog/zenity/xdialog/shellgui/gxmessage/gtkdialog
will be used whenever possible.