Re: [Sheflug] GUI vs CLI and config file formats

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

On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, Martin P Holland wrote:

> This last point is possibly exactly my point. Everyone has there own really
> cool configuration file format. Total anarachy. This is a bad feature of unix.
> There should be a more standardised format that is flexible enough to deal with
> all cases. xml may or may not be it.

XML doesn't support strict configuration files; there is no 'config DTD'.
XML only allows you to re-use the parser that reads in the config file.

> >Unfortunately, and what I am complaining about, far more attention is
> >paid to the "G" than to the "UI".
> I agree. Quite often when a new GUI project is announced and you go to their
> page to download an early version you find the functionality of the app is
> totally absent but all the menubars etc are there just as in the final version.

Chicken and egg situation though, isn't it? Depends whether you believe in
top-down programming or bottom up. I have no problem with people releasing
early versions of GUI shells and more than I have a problem with people
releasing algorithms with no front end, etc.

> >Right; what I meant was that kppp should automagically set the
> >debugging higher, and help to produce a bug report.
> 
> No No No! It should diagnose the problem.

Er.. it does?

> >I don't mean to single out kppp for criticism, really.  The point is
> >that if they are best of breed, and yet "fairly puny", and noone else
> >can be bothered to try that hard, that doesn't say a lot for the rest
> >of the industry.  That's the problem.

I don't think anyone who's used kppp really calls it 'puny'. It's far
better than any other ppp config tool, bar none IMO ;)

Cheers,

Alex.


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