Hmm...a lot of interesting thoughts here.

I think we are overlooking a lot of important Slim flexibility.

The web interface attempts to be all things to all people on all
platforms (combinations of O/S and browser).

As such, I think it ends up being jack of all trades, master of none.

A tremendous amount of work has gone into the CLI since Slimserver 5
days, and it now seems to be quite a viable interface. There are bulk
data extraction options, event driven options with the listeners, there
is current status stuff that is fast.

That gives people who want a different interface the ability to write
their own. Or use someone elses.

Moose is one. For all that people like or don't like .net, the version
I downloaded some time ago was quite serviceable and I gather it's
improved since.

I considered writing one in my favorite language, Visual Foxpro. It
won't port to a mac, but I don't own one. It won't run on Linux, but I
don't have any of those either. Nor a Unix. I also don't have a Cray.
The point is, sometimes you can do a better job, especially when trying
to do graphics rich, highly interactive things, when you do get a bit
more implementation specific. There's nothing wrong with that, and
nothing that offends the gods of cross-platform. No one says the whole
thing, and everything that anyone would ever chose to use with it, has
to run on every conceivable platform from Windows to a slug to my
toaster. 

For instance, everyone has their own music ripper. These pretty much
line up by platform. No one seems to feel that you have to run a perl
based CD ripper in order to be following the spirit of Slim. Similarly,
there'd be nothing wrong with a windows only UI implementation, running
as a CLI client and a totally different one for the mac, for the palm,
for the penguin, etc.

Trying to make them all run one set of common code might well,
unfortunately, end up with a least common denominator UI. And that
might be pretty sad.


-- 
Michaelwagner
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michaelwagner's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=428
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=25395

_______________________________________________
discuss mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss

Reply via email to