Outwit: UNIX Tool-Based Programming Meets the Windows World

The ubiquity of Windows-based desktop environments has not been matched by a corresponding emergence of tools supporting the Unix tool composition paradigm. Outwit is a suite of tools based on the Unix tool design principles allowing the processing of Windows application data with sophisticated data manipulation pipelines. The outwit tools offer access to the Windows clipboard, the registry, relational databases, document properties, and shell links. We demonstrate a number of applications of the outwit tools used in conjuction with existing Unix commands, and discuss future directions of our work. “GUIs normally make it simple to accomplish simple actions and impossible to accomplish complex actions.” — Doug Gwyn