In the olden days, the Unices had some coherence and core principle. After the OSS explosion at the end of the nineties that doesn't hold true anymore.
For example all the Gnome/KDE apps are not combinable command line utils with GUI front ends, but backend+GUI apps in one. And the architecture, UX and ways they use are far from what the UNIX of old used. For example Gnome/KDE were directly inspired from MS Windows (first) and from OS X (in subsequent versions), to the point that traditional UNIX users complained.
>In theory the Unix way is to have plain text as input and output. This has meant that many open source softwares use nice plain text files for their data storage stuff.
iTunes also used a plain XML file for its database. IIRC, it has moved it to binary plist files for performance reasons several versions ago.
In the olden days, the Unices had some coherence and core principle. After the OSS explosion at the end of the nineties that doesn't hold true anymore.
For example all the Gnome/KDE apps are not combinable command line utils with GUI front ends, but backend+GUI apps in one. And the architecture, UX and ways they use are far from what the UNIX of old used. For example Gnome/KDE were directly inspired from MS Windows (first) and from OS X (in subsequent versions), to the point that traditional UNIX users complained.
>In theory the Unix way is to have plain text as input and output. This has meant that many open source softwares use nice plain text files for their data storage stuff.
iTunes also used a plain XML file for its database. IIRC, it has moved it to binary plist files for performance reasons several versions ago.