begin  quoting gossamer axe as of Sun, Apr 10, 2005 at 03:38:02PM -0700:
> We are computer enthusiasts, I think sometimes we forget that there
> are a lot of people out there that can't program their VCR let alone
> trying to setup any server software.

I can vouch for many VCRs being needlessly hard to program.  Also,
most remotes have _lousy_ button layouts.  They *look* sexy, but you
have to turn on the light and look at the remote to do very much with
it. :(

>                                       I'm not picking on you or trying
> to put down your post, but the majority of internet users don't want
> to fuss with anything except double clicking on a program and
> expecting it to load and work right. =P 

Remember, double-click is a hard-to-learn concept. (Seriously.)

And by "work right" you naturally mean the DWIM protocol, not the 
engineer-friendly DWIS protocol.

Actually, this came up the other day -- the average "I don't want to
know what's going on under the hood" person can relatively easily be
talked into wanting three quantities, A, B, and C, such that A > B,
and B > C, and C > A.  All it takes is asking the right questions in
the right order... 

So going with how the average person wants things to work isn't 
necessarily, by itself, a good idea.  The desires of the end-user
need to be tempered with the sensibilities of the developers.

>                                            All I wanted to try to do
> is take my scripts, which do run on a webserver, and put them in a
> nice pretty little GUI type program that is a no fuss double click on
> me and I run program.  But, something I can deal with as far as a
> programming language that I'll have some hair left after I finish the
> program =P
  
I've seen PHP used as an application-building language. . .

But for "here's a list, click on something, do _that_", I can't think
of much that would beat TCL/TK.  In fact, somewhere I have a script that
takes in a config file and turns it into a launcher button-bar.

-Stewart "Now-a-days I just use WindowMaker." Stremler
-- 
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