Mark Komarinski said:
> When people ask me about writing for Access vs. MySQL, my best comparison
> is that MS products are focus on how things look on the screen versus
> how they act. MySQL (and most other UNIX tools) are focus on how things
> work and act. A UI is left as an exercise to the reader, or is at least
> the second thing a coder thinks about.
But now that the back end is well-built, you can concentrate on building
useful front-ends. Don't knock the use of the point-and-click interfaces.
Lots of people out where I worked didn't care bit about SQL, they just knew
that if they hooked the things up, they go their reports. Unfortunately, the
SQL was lousy, and the MS Access database should be shot, but that ability to
hook up a few tables and have a report sold it (well, that plus the bundling
with office, which was probably 80% of the sale). I fought routinely with
folks who didn't want us to implement a solid back end because "I just did it
in Access here, so I'm going to copy it to all the folks who need it."
>
> Another notable example of this is Word. In trying to be a true
> WYSIWYG system, it has completely shattered the idea of an easy-to-use
> word processor. At least apps like LyX make no claims of WYSIWYG-ness,
> instead calling themselves "WYSIWYM" (What You See Is What You Mean),
> which offloads the effort of making everything look perfect onscreen.
I'd like to see two tools - the LyX kind of WYSIWYM, aimed at the structural
stuff, and another one to let you build the output (XSL style). Your content
folks use the first tool to build the document, worrying about chapters,
sections, references, etc without concern for the final output, and the
document designers (is there such a thing?) use the latter tool for the page
layup (whether Web or paper, or whatever). Frame comes closest of what I've
seen to the latter, but we need a good Open Source equivalent (and I don't
know of any under development, alas).
>
> -Mark
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > A good example of Ben's point might be M$ Access. It offers a pretty series
> > of boxes you can connect w/ lines to choose items out of column A to match
> > with column B while avoiding column C, etc etc. When you're all done it
> > creates an ugly SQL statement behind the scenes to do the work. Although
> > something like Access could help someone learn SQL ("oh, I see how that
> > works..."), most users couldn't care less about the SQL statements
> > themselves. Likewise with any HTML GUI. Many users probably started with
> > them by saying "I can use this to help learn HTML" but, if you have a GUI
> > doing the work most people will not bother to look under the hood. And the
> > people who actually want to lean SQL or HTML, for instance, should *never*
> > use the results of GUIs as an example (I remember the first time I saw
> > FrontPage use about eighty space characters when a simple two column table
> > would do the same thing and not care about screen size).
I think this is more problem with the maker of the tool than the concept. I
don't know why it couldn't be done (and the AS/400 can come close with it's
help tools for building queries / commands, but AS/400 is a thing unto itself).
> >
> > If someone wants to learn sed, awk, SQL, HTML, PERL or almost anything
> > similar, the best way is to just start small and build your knowledge in
> > steps. For instance, write an awk script to print the fourth field of every
> > record. Next, have it compare that field to a constant and only print it if
> > they are the same. Next, have it compare several fields to different
> > constants and print a different message based on matching combinations.
> > Then, replace the constants with variables and have it accept those values
> > as command line arguments or passed from a script. Just going through an
> > exercise like this, and learning from your own mistakes (there will be
> > plenty), will be a lot more informative than any amount of time spent
> > analyzing a GUI's code. (For anyone who has never played with awk and think
> > this is an over simplified assignment, give it a try...it can be a real eye
> > opener).
Just been doing that. However, it would be nice to have a GOOD (note that
word) tool to help fill in the options as you start learning, and then can
save the results and play with them.
> >
> > Remember, "If you give a man a hand out, you take away his will to work"
> > -Larry
"Give a guy a fish, and he will eat for today. Teach him to fish, and he will
eat forever"
jeff
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffry Smith Technical Sales Consultant Mission Critical Linux
[EMAIL PROTECTED] phone:603.930.9739 fax:978.446.9470
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thought for today: softcopy /soft'kop-ee/ n.
[by analogy with `hardcopy']
A machine-readable form of corresponding hardcopy. See bits,
machinable.
**********************************************************
To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] with the following text in the
*body* (*not* the subject line) of the letter:
unsubscribe gnhlug
**********************************************************
