Andrew Lentvorski wrote: > John H. Robinson, IV wrote: > > >Webbrowsers are fine for displaying information, and simple interactive > >things. > > Which pretty well defines a bug reporting system.
Nope. Bug trackers have to deal with textareas. Remember, these are the canaries that indicate you are probably not dealing with a simple system. Unless you are talking about the display and ``check, this is done'' type thing. Submitting is a different matter. > >The downside is that webbrowsers are so prevalent, and follow a rough > >standard, that everyone thinks that is the best way to go to be > >cross-platform. > > And they are 100% correct. Want proof? Try sending a binary data blob > through email in a bug report (packet capture file, if you must know). > Which encoding do you use? Can the system handle attachments? Can the > system handle a file that big? etc. You get those same questions. Wait, perhaps the webform was not designed to upload that binary file, so there is no block to put the binary file into. Perhaps the textarea is limited to say 1000 characters (you can do that, you know). Then what? Webbrowsers are no panacea for that. To answer your question: You encode the blob however your MUA does it. Chances are, it will do it right. Especially if you are using a decent one, like mutt. There are no guarantees, but you have a very high likelihood of success. And if the blob is too big, you will get a nice note back saying so. > Using a webbrowser. Click, select, wait for upload, done. I wish life were always so easy. It's not. > And that's before we even start discussing about the fact that you have > to *configure* the email system before you can file the bug report > because most systems use challenge response to block spammers. > Generally it is easier to configure lynx, links, or w3m than to > configure reception of mail. Folks that use a challenge system don't want your input. Drop them to the floor *instantly*. > And, heaven forbid, actually using ... like .. a *standard* ... rather > than rolling yet another incompatible, annoying interface. How pedestrian! Heh. You are making me want to laugh at that. The ``standards'' you speak of are html and http. I counter with smtp and ascii. Or smtp and utf-8. After that, everything is fair game. You can screw up a webform as easily as an email form. Especially if your webform is a maze of twisty radio boxes, all poorly defined. Let's say you make things *nice* and *easy* for the user, and come up with a list of *all* possible areas that the bug can be in. Because you are nice like that, and being nice is nice. You make a drop down list, so they can see all these areas. Now someone comes along with a bug that does not fit *any* category. Oops. Now what?[1] [1] This has happened to me on more than one occasion. Yeah, webforms are *so* much better. (note, you can do crappy things like that with email. it is far less likely, since an email parser author knows that a *human* will be at the other side.) If one were feeling so froggy, one could do the http dialog manually, and bypass the limitations of the drop down list. That sounds awfully horrid to me. > Glad you like email, but I'll stick with the web interfaces, TYVM. *shwug* As you wish. I bet you have a harder time keeping a record of all the webform submissions you make than I keep track of all the emails I send off. -john Best thing about decent systems, they offer multiple avenues. It is not all that hard, actually. -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
