Darren J Moffat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> Opinion:
> >>
> >> Personally I detest with a passion the CLI that cdrecord has despite it
> >> being technically good at actually doing the writing. I like the
> >> simple interface that cdrw provides. The simple cdrw CLI could be
> >> implemented as a wrapper around cdrecord and I'd be happy with that, but
> >> don't force me to use cdrecord CLI.
> >
> > I am not sure whether you did read the man page for cdrecord in depth
>
> The very fact you have to read the cdrecord man page in depth is the
> issue.
This is strange, it seems that you did not realize that it is not possible
to use cdrw without reading it's man page. The CLI from cdrw seems to be
even worse than the one from cdrecord.
The online help from cdrw is not helpful but confusing.
> Take as an example the second paragraph of the cdrecord man page dives
> straight into talking about SCSI buses targets and luns this then goes
> on for paragraphs.
>
> Now compare this with the cdrw man page.
The cdrw man page is definitely not better.
It confuses the reader and forces him to scroll down to the examples section
in order to understand the concept. I believe that the cdrecord man page even
gives a better overview in the first pages...
> Look also at the examples, the first example in each man page attempts
> to show the simple case of burning a disk using an existing iso file.
> Again the cdrecord man page is talking about SCSI buses and targets,
> something that is way beyond the knowledge of many users that are
> otherwise very comfortable with the CLI.
Well, bot programs are build on top of SCSI pass thrugh...
And BTW: this week we are celebrating the 20th aniversary of SCSI pass through.
I did develop the SCG driver and the base of libscg in the first week of 1986.
> > but it seems that you don't know that it is not harder to use cdrecord
> > (you need to spedicfy even less parameters in case you like to do the
> > simple tasks that cdrw only supports) than to use cdrw.
>
> Personally I find the man page for cdrecord very technical, this is good
> if you really need to know all the details of how to write different
> types of media on different drives.
The man page for cdrw is confusing and if at all, I did write only one CD
with cdrw. mostly because it's CLI is counter intuitive.
> Similarly the help output for cdrecord is 82 lines long, I find that
> excessive and useless. I just recently fixed a similar issue with zfs(1).
The gelp output for cdrw is completely confusing and not helpful at all.
> > For this reason, I would call cdrecord more user friendly.
>
> That depends on how technical you are. Joeg you know probably more than
> anyone else all the issues with writting CD/DVD media and issues with
> different drives. As a result cdrecord has the ability to workaround
> all these issues and has lots of command options for doing so, this is
> great for technical people but cdrw is simple.
Well, this would be an argument in case that the cdrw CLI was better than
the one from cdrecord.
Don't confuse this with the "feeled complecity", it may be that you just
are afraid of the various possibilities of cdrecord but the absolute
complexity of the CLI of cdrw is a real bad example of unneeded comlexity
that iy already present althouth cdrw does nto support many options.
> I'd class myself as a very experienced UNIX user but I'm pretty much a
> novice when it comes to SCSI and I really have to stop and think about
> what is a bus what a target is and what a lun is. I shouldn't need to
> have to know or even read about this just to burn an iso file on to
> CD/DVD media when there is only one writable device on the system
> (probably the case of the vast majority of systems).
>
> So for me cdrw(1) is much more friendly than cdrecord(1), thats just
> they way it is for me.
It is definitely not. I guess that you just did read the man page for cdrw
many times but did not do the same for cdrecord.
> I think it is great that cdrecord can do so much but for me the UI is
> too complex and the man page is far too technical too quickly.
And the CLI for cdrw is way too complex for such a simple program.
BTW: similar things aply to "star" vs. Sun tar. I should make a demo
of star on the Sun tech days.... it is intesting that all people who did
try to use star for one day will never like to use something else later.
I try to let my programs base on a simple concept and later add
more options. It is obvious that the simple fact that there are so many options
may be a problem for the "first contact".
Jörg
--
EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (uni)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
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