| gabriel rosenkoetter on Thu, 26 Sep 2002 20:22:19 -0400 |
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On Thu, Sep 26, 2002 at 07:39:48PM -0400, Will Dyson wrote: > Uh. I really don't think that Gabe was arguing agains GUIs. Just > pedanticly pointing out that there is plenty of metadata about each file > in the filesystem. More than anything else, I was playing the part, which is part of why I've stayed out of the ensuing discussion. :^> I actually don't have much against GUI-based interfaces, where they make sense. I'm not so hot on people who try to both do that and low-level administration, since many of the fine details get easily lost in a GUI to configure them, for a wide variety of reasons I can't even put a finger on. (Windows is a prime example, Apple's trod both sides of the line--their network configuration in Mac OS pre 7.5 or so was totally whacked out if you wanted to use TCP/IP, but Mac OS 8 and 9 are pretty good, X I'll come to in a moment, Irix does a pretty decent job, much better, I think, than Solaris's ToolTalk stuff, which is weird considering how similar the building blocks there are.) I happen to think that, for POSIX-ish OSes, a command line interface makes the most sense because all of the standard (that is, the ones they've all got) tools use that interface. Not even various GNU/Linux distribution's GUI configuration tools look the same, much less across OSes. But, despite small syntax differences[1], ifconfig(8) performs the same function everywhere, no searching for the network-configuration-widget in whatever graphical configurator you're using. Bear in mind that my OS progression went from Mac OS through NetBSD to whatever-as-long-as-it's-mostly-POSIX. I've got a couple of NeXTs, and I really like NeXTStep (having seen it first in Washington University's Arts & Sciences lab in the mid-80s, before that all got blown away for Wintel machines). I'm not a big fan of what Apple did to the interface when the turned NeXTStep into Mac OS X; imho they made it harder to use. So I'm not totally anti-GUI-stuff. But I've got this reputation to live up to, you see... ;^> Getting back to the metadata point... there are a lot of reasons my "Bah, humbug!" response is silly. Extant file systems need more space for metadata within the file system for a lot of reasons wholly separate from any GUI interests (think ACLs especially). I wouldn't live sticking 16k of crap in metadata just for an icon, but it sure beats having a Windows registry-esque place to keep it all. (I think having directory-local .icons files probably makes the best compromise and wastes the least space while still functioning at a reasonable pace, but I'm not the one doing the FS nor the GUI design, so it's not like my opinion counts for a lot anyhow. :^>) [1] Not that those differences don't regularly irritate the hell out of me. And don't get me started on route(8). -- gabriel rosenkoetter gr@eclipsed.net Attachment:
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