> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:asterisk-users- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Strom Carlson > Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 11:16 AM > To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion > Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Plan to free myself from AAH > > On 5/17/06, David K Parker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I wouldn't knock the third party "friendly" interfaces to Asterisk too > hard. > > They will evolve and improve over time. The adoption of Asterisk as a > > mainstream PBX is dependent upon a user friendly interface. > > Well, as soon as a GUI shows up that doesn't make configuring Asterisk > like trying to sew with boxing gloves on, I'll give it a good, hard, > unbiased look. For now, though, the available interfaces are really > just not there yet - they don't allow enough flexibility and they are > very easy to outgrow. > > -- > Strom Carlson > http://www.stromcarlson.com/
Strom, Asterisk is far too flexible to ever have a GUI that can do everything that everybody does with asterisk, thank goodness. There will be (and are) some GUIs that are good at managing asterisk in specific roles. Look at the CLASS 5 hard switches (lucent 5E, Nortel DMS), no useful GUI interface there either. I have to say that I agree with the strong focus on core functionality and the lack of focus on the GUI stuff, performance is far more important to many of us than looks. The open nature of the asterisk code makes building a good specialized interface for you particular application childsplay for a good web/database programmer, assuming they have access to an asterisk dialplan syntax expert, and there are a larger number of them out there, most of whom charge less for their time than a certified Lucent or Nortel tech. I do not disagree with fact that there are no good comprehensive GUIs, I just disagree with the assumption that there ever will be. Asterisk core will always be ahead of the GUI add-ons. After a year and a half experience with asterisk in production environments I am still amazed more every day by what can be done with it, and I will never recommend or buy another Lucent or Nortel or any other "hard" pbx. You would be doing yourself a favor learning the dialplan and application commands. It is worth the effort. Mark and everyone else at Digium and all of the other contributors should be cast in bronze and placed at the top of the hill at the end of their "terms" for changing the face of IP telephony forever. Damon _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
