On Mar 30, 2005, at 2:20 pm, Dave Nebinger wrote:
2. Totally configurable via gui - no low-level file editing. As power
users this is something that we want/need, but the windows user expects to
pull up a dialog for the program and click checkboxes to turn things on and
off. I can just imagine the dialogs necessary to configure something like
postfix or sendmail ;-)
This is exactly why Windows is so aggravating - mandatory GUI configuration is Windows' major failing, IMO.
All applications have idiosyncratic, unexpected, or just plain quirky behaviour, and many have bugs. Trying to document or reproduce that from a GUI perspective is a nightmare. Can you imagine being trying to reproduce the behaviour to file a bug report saying "if the `update file progress' checkbox on the `server statistics' tab is checked when the application is running in `silent mode` then uploads will stall unless the `apply' button is pressed on the `configuration' window prior to exiting the menu"? Yet such a bug is quite conceivable.
Let's compare that with a similar bug report for a Linux application - "changing config file to say UPDATE_FILE_PROGRESS=1 causes uploads to stall when `/etc/init.d/msexchange reload` is called". Isn't that much easier? No wonder changes to the registry are so often needed on Windows machines in order to configure advanced behaviour.
If you can imagine the dialogs necessary to configure something like postfix or sendmail, then perhaps that's because you've worked on MS Exchange. Or even Outlook! Software is a compromise, and if you have a powerful, versatile application then you will by necessity have many configuration options; there comes a point at which wrapping those up in a GUI is no longer beneficial, as administrators have to wade through through different menus and dialog boxes in order to find them. Certainly this is no problem for experienced admins undertaking familiar tasks, but it's easy to forget a single step of even a frequently-used procedure - the alternative of a single configuration file allows one to edit from top to bottom, safe in the knowledge that no configuration options are hidden by an "advanced button" or an inadequately-labelled checkbox.
Stroller.
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