Re: [Sheflug] https

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

On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

>Martin> It seems you expect _more_ of kppp.
> I do.  Maybe I've been reading too many Al Hudson posts.

Just call me Ron Dennis. ( I don't suppose that makes any sense to those
who've not seen the Siemens ads on telly ;)

>Martin> Maybe you expect too much from GUI apps ;-)
> No.  It's not a double standard; I demand the same from text-based
> apps.  I'm not pleased with the results there, either.  But GUI
> advocates claim to do better.  In fact, they claim it's practically
> automatic.

This GUI advocate claims it should be better ;) And it should be
automatic.

> and access to documentation through the GUI.  But GUI is inherently
> biased to the lowest commmon denominator.

Hmmm. GUIs are *accessible* to the lcd; biased sounds a little elitist ;)

>     Martin> What kppp does is to report what was logged to
>     Martin> /var/log/messages.  It's hard to see what else it could
>     Martin> do.
> As Al points out, there are a lot of things it could do.
>     Martin> It's true though that if kppp fails for some reason then
>     Martin> you are going to have to increase syslog debugging and
>     Martin> grovel through /var/log/mumble just as you would if you
> Why me?  Why doesn't the GUI do it?  (Or does it?  I don't use kppp,
> obviously.)

Actually, kppp isn't all that bad. If a connection fails, it tells you
why. It also attempts to make an educated guess at the cause, rather than
the symptom - nine times out of ten, it's pretty much right. Also, if
you're technically minded you can open up a terminal window and watch
everything go by. There's still more it could do, but it's not bad.

> And why doesn't the GUI package all that information up into a nice
> mail message you can address to the help channel of your choice?

This is a very good point; they certainly should do. But then, few
applications do this, and it doesn't depend on the interface particularly.

> Or maybe they were using Debian and got exactly the same result from a
> non-GUI prompt and answer session.
> 
> What, then, is the benefit of GUI?

Would you rather make config or make menuconfig when compiling linux? (I
class make menuconfig as an almost-GUI, btw, since it is pretty much
identical to make xconfig - but that's a half-full/half-empty argument ;)
GUIs are very good at presenting large amounts of data. There is also, to
an extent, a kind of sliding scale - that is; there is no point at which
one may divide applications into GUI / non-GUI: examples such as xterm,
etc., all sit in an odd space inbetween GUI/non-GUI. Many 'non-GUI' apps
have 'GUI' features (such as the ability to interact with GUIs, resize
intelligently, use mouse input, etc.). Some apps attempt to replicate GUI
features (lynx's drop-down boxes, for example), it's all a bit of a
melting pot in some ways.

Cheers,

Alex.


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