Re: [Sheflug] https

[Alex Hudson <nospam [at] york.ac.uk>]

On Mon, 12 Jun 2000, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> Show me a 3D, color-coded graph, along with a set of relevant buttons,
> that helps a user whose kppp refuses to connect to his ISP get it
> right.

I don't need to ;) I would lay money on more people new to linux having
success with kppp rather than configuring the text files... 

> It must be necessary to use all three dimensions, and the
> color coding, of course; if it can be done in text it doesn't count.

I think we've found an extreme case here; my comments about
multi-dimensional data structures don't count for *every* application,
obviously ;)

>     Al> I don't agree with that for a second ;) GUIs are able to show
> Well, then give us some examples of complete, educational GUIs for
> computer system administration.  The tool for Samba is pretty good,
> I'll grant that one.  fetchmailconf is another.

I quite highly rate the linuxconf interface too; although it takes a
minute or two to figure out when new to it. Comanche is supposed to be
very good, although I confess I've never used it. Mr Sims has good things
to say about webmin. 

> But just trolling the
> Sheflug archives will give me examples of a dozen bad ones, I'll bet.
> That's not a good ratio....

I would imagine the ratio is roughly the same as bad text interfaces..

>     Al> fundamental n-dimensional relationships between data /
>     Al> functions much better than the command line ever will.
> Which has squat to do with the problem of administering a computer
> system.  And the command line is a straw man.

Not necessarily, no. Graph drawing[1] is fundamental to most network
analysis tools I know of, for example... 

>     Al> To be able to see dynamic results to a configuration change
>     Al> requires the use of a GUI.
> Say what?

Constraint satisfation. I.e., radio buttons.

>     Al> To be able to group configuration options logically requires
>     Al> more than a command line.
> 
> Yeah; that's why environment variables, config files, and text editors
> were invented.

. and why they were superceded by the GUI ;)) Where would you like all
the pertinent information - in various variables, files and command-line
switches all over the system, or in one box on the screen which takes care
of it all for you? 

> Funny thing about config files, they usually contain
> comments (eg, the one in my smailconfig that says "host name checking
> off for RFC 1123 compliance and because [address deleted] consistently
> forgets its own name").  Haven't seen a GUI yet that allows, let alone
> encourages, keeping that kind of notes.

Strange, I have ;) You can dynamically link GUI options to other sections
of the program, or help files. You can invoke the browser to bring up the
full RFC. There's no limit to the amount of information a GUI can relate
to you.

> Most GUIs simply provide the same interface as a well-organized config
> file, except that in the GUI you click on a tab and in the config file
> you use string search, and in the GUI you click on buttons while in
> the editor you do a word delete and type "YES".  Big deal.

Not quite ;) As an example, it is *much* easier to screw SAMBA by altering
the conf files directly than using the web tool - it guarantees syntactic
correctness, so all you're left with is the plain ole human logic errors.

> Once again (4th time), I have never denied they are useful---to the
> well-educated, as well as to the lazy.  My issues are with education,
> reliability, and troubleshooting.  I think they are inherently lacking
> on all three counts, and I've yet to see any argument from you that
> they are useful for those purposes.

I would agree if you were to make the point that the GUI tools are less
developed than the command line / etc. equivilents, because that is very
true. They are lacking in areas. However, in the general case it's not
true, because the fundamental usability of a GUI is far and away better
than that of a text-mode interface. Computers as we know them would not
have taken off if it were not for the GUI. 

> Graphs, let alone 3D graphics, have nothing to do with the kinds of
> problems we're talking about; none of the newbies on this list are
> generating gigabyte scale logfiles that require modern data-mining
> techniques to interpret, fer heaven's sake.

[1] I was talking nodes and vertices, not bar-charts ;)

Cheers,

Alex.


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