Re: [Sheflug] https

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

>>>>> "Al" == Alex Hudson <eah106 [at] york.ac.uk> writes:

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

    >> classic admin/text stuff already know how to do it ... those
    >> GUIs will be written with newbies in mind.  Thus the bias.

    Al> Hmm. I don't know if that is the case.  [...]  Whereas, the
    Al> 'newbie' unix market is relatively undeveloped.  [...]
    Al> Occasionally, a large development complete regenerates part of
    Al> the city to modern standards.

Ie, you admit to the bias.

    Al> Would you rather make config or make menuconfig when compiling
    Al> linux?
    >> make menuconfig.  But that's a straw man.  I see the choice as
    >> `make menuconfig' vs. `emacs .config'.  (vi would be fine, of
    >> course.)

    Al> It was you talking about 'prompt and answer' - I took that to
    Al> mean something like make config ;))

True, but too literal.  I was pointing out that in the particular case
of kppp, even 'prompt and answer' can do a pretty good job.  The main
thing that most install scripts screw up on (Debian too) is that
they're part of the package, not a separate app.  This means you have
to be prepared right now for all your packages, or suffer significant
delays (because of course the install process pauses while you're
searching for the IP address of your ISP's nameserver).  Configuring a
linux kernel is much more complex in terms of the number of options
one typically want's to consider, but generally pretty orthogonal, so
that the "edit the flat config file" approach works well, once one
learns the hierarchy of prefixes (eg, CONFIG_SCSI*).

It would be really easy to knock up an Emacs mode for editing .config
files.  Add a few comments to allow outline-mode to do its thing, and
you'd have the equivalent of make menuconfig.  (Unacceptable overhead
for non-Emacs-addicts, of course.)

    >> As for the definition of GUI, I would pretty much consider
    >> anything that has a notion of input focus finer than "the whole
    >> terminal" as "GUI".

    Al> Hmmmm... has a command line, also has a text edit box, both
    Al> places where I can type stuff in, and I can change the focus
    Al> between... does vi count?!

    Al> (I'm being provocative now, I think ;)

I don't have any problem with that, actually.

It's not thoroughgoing GUI, of course, because of the modality, but
consider that many modern vis have multiple buffers and online help.
Also you need pointing input; does vi have a "mark region and cut"
facility?  (I only ever use the "cut lines".)  Nor does the interface
allow for buttons and menu selection.

So although I wouldn't say it's thoroughly GUI, it certainly has been
infected by some aspects of GUI.

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