On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 4:13 PM, Eric Kow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, Dec 05, 2008 at 15:07:06 +0100, Josef Svenningsson wrote: >> Hiding information is a very poor (but sadly rather common) way to try >> to improve user interfaces. If we decide that put is not sufficiently >> important (despite my screaming and kicking) I think it should be >> removed altogether. Having a class of secret, half-hidden commands is >> only going to confuse users in the end. > > So far, the way we have been using hidden commands is to assume that > users are not expected to use them at all. The hidden commands so > far fall into three categories: > > - aliases - things like darcs move => darcs mv > - stubs - things like darcs commit, which just tell you to use > an alternative sequence of commands > - server commands - darcs transfer-mode in particular > I should perhaps clarify my general position a bit more here. The problem is not in hiding commands, it is in hiding functionality. Hiding aliases and stubs I don't see as a (big) problem. It is when the user finds out that in order to achieve certain things he has to delve into this secret cave of hidden functionality which is a confusing thing. Therefore my personal preference would be for the server commands not to be hidden. But since I don't use them (indeed I didn't know about the transfer-mode command until now) I don't have that strong an opinion in this particular case.
> I agree with Josef's general sentiment, although my way of phrasing it > might be that if we are going to hide put, we had better make sure > nobody is actually going to use it. One thing we could do is, if we > were to hide it, is to transform put into a stub, telling people to just > darcs init and darcs push. > Right. That would have been a good way of solving it. I'm happy you decided to keep put though. Cheers, Josef _______________________________________________ darcs-users mailing list darcs-users@darcs.net http://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/darcs-users
