Introduction to the Command Terminal
Before Windows was created, the most common operating system ran from a terminal normally 132 characters by 25 or 80 lines. One of the most used was the VT100 terminal. That meant in order to run programs or manipulate the operating system you had to manually type in commands. When Windows was first created it was actually a graphical user interface that was created in order to make using the operating system easier for a novice user, also Unix moved to graphical user interface called X Windows. The display thermal was then made redundant. However almost all windows and Unix commands can be run from a terminal so the terminal on graphical operating systems was replaced with a window that emulated the old VT100 called a Command Terminal. Some call it a console window others may call it a shell window. All the modern operating systems have the ability to display a Command Terminal.
The Windows command prompt (cmd.exe)
The command prompt is simply a window that by default displays the current directory (Unix), or in windows term a folder, that you are in and has a blinking cursor ready for you to type your commands. For example in Figure 1 above you can see that it says C:\WINDOWS>. The C:\WINDOWS> is the prompt and it tells me that I am currently in the c:\windows directory. If I was in the directory c:\program files\directory the prompt would instead look like this: C:\PROGRAM FILES\DIRECTORY>.
In windows there is two ways to start or launch a command prompt, in user mode or in administrator mode
To use the command prompt you would type in the commands and instructions you want and then press enter. In the next section we will discuss some useful commands and how to see all available built in commands for the command prompt.
Why does ImgArchive run from the command line.
ImgArchive for the sake of simplicity and uses command line tools that can be access in the most basic of ways that is pretty much uniform across operating systems. The core features of SIA are in a simple command line command sia.exe or sia on Mac and Linux. The administration of the archive comes from a simple command line command siaadmin.exe or siaadmin on Mac or Linux. These commands can be called by wrapper applications that are graphical user interfaces. The command line arguments are simple to interface from other applications and will change infrequently.
Apple Mac (XOS)
The mac prides its self being a graphical user interface, however it's based on BSD Unix and so under the hood is just another Unix like linux and like linux can be driveñ almost intilly from the command line, so much of the mac can be driven as linux. Indeed if you are familiar with with linux then look out for mac ports, thesee are