I imagine that there are a lot of operations that could benefit from a shell-like interface, even if there are certain operations that don't lend themselves to the paradigm. Even just being able to say something like "Create a circular selection 'box' with a radius of 50px" that you can then manually manipulate with the mouse could be useful. More useful than trying to create the same thing via just mouse input.
I don't disagree. My view comes from having switched away from AutoCad about seven years ago to a Cad package originally developed for the Mac. I ranted about the ways in which it's API sucked compared to AutoCad to the point of being banned from the bulletin board...in those days I enjoyed trolling more than today.
Munging the application logic and the display does have some advantages, and there are some aspects of the work-flow provided by the not-Autocad software that are really useful for producing drawings...Solid filling rectangles is not a geometric idea but it allows for placing the rectangle in the foreground of an image.
But unlike AutoCad keyboard entry is always a second class citizen and there's no way not to use the mouse in the middle of trying to complete just about every interaction. Indeed one of my big rants was about some distinction between tools and commands where binding a command to an icon required an extra click in the drawing area in order to run.
There's no reason that a circular selection box couldn't be moved with "$> move 129 -204". Indeed if you're working pixel by pixel, that's exactly the way to get exactly what you mean. Exacting layouts are exacting because we hold that level of detail in our heads.
