I think that it's a bit much to say that expressing my concerns "scaremongering" and "armwaving." I had the impression I was expressing reasonable ideas in a polite way.
I agree that "do one thing well" doesn't apply strictly to SCID. I used the expression to invoke a utilitarian, minimalist software design philosophy to which I more or less subscribe. I can see that I wasn't clear enough. One thing that I've always liked about SCID is its simplicity as compared to CB and CA. It could have been even simpler for my taste, but it's the best of the lot. That and, of course, that it runs on something besides Windows. Much of what I see on the SCID list server is people asking that SCID implement functionality that isn't really essential to what SCID needs to be to be a fine chess data base. That's my opinion, and I don't think that by expressing it I am "appealing to Unix authority" or even to Unix orthodoxy. I agree that "Utility is not solved by asking ourselves if something will always be useful for everyone anytime." But a concern for utility should cause us to ask if something would be sufficiently useful to enough people to justify the complexity that it would introduce. Complicating the game headers with links to a website that has no ownership of the games in the first place seems, to me, fairly obviously to fail the test. Again my opinion, which I believe it is my right to express here so long as I do so politely. You ask where I would turn if I gave up on SCID. A better question for an open source project like this one is what a number of people, capable of writing code, would do if they didn't like the direction the project was taking. Nice talking to you. Mark Morss On Sat, 2012-01-14 at 22:19 -0500, Ben St-Pierre wrote: > Hello Mark, > > Since you replied, and politics has been settled, here are my comments: > > > I fully subscribe to the "do one thing well" philosophy. > > Scid is not Sed. This remark makes little sense. > > > Much of what I see from the SCID list server causes me to worry that SCID > > is on the > path to becoming bloatware. > > Scid is already a bloatware, if we keep with Unix orthodoxy. > Besides, this is a slippery slope. > > > There seem to be a great many calls for gingerbread with icing when > > perfectly good bread is already being served. > > We're talking about an URL. > An URL that already appears in the PGN window. > But now that we consider the fact that it would be colored, > and that people could click on this, > let's invoke Unix philosophy, > armwave bloatware, > and use a conservative analogy. > > > With specific regard to automated downloads from TWIC or anywhere else, > > I can't recall where that was discussed. > But I do recall what was being discussed here: > A shell script to download many TWIC > was being frowned upon by Alex. > This raised a problem for which I offered an answer. > Marcin offered another answer. > So I'm not sure how this remark is relevant. > > > I hope those responsible for SCID's direction take into account that > more and more "functionality" does not always add to the utility of a > piece of software. > > There's not much of anything that always add to the utility of a piece > of sofware. > > Utility is not solved by asking ourselves if something will always be > useful for everyone anytime. > > > From this point of view, ChessBase and Chess Assistant are very bad models > > to follow. > > So to use an argument you used against TWIC, > if you were to stop using Scid, > where would you go? > > > In line with this, I find the thought of links in the game headers, which > > would undoubtedly call some sort of attention to themselves, pretty > > horrifying. > > Because of the appeal to Unix authority and the bloatware scaremongering? > > > If somebody wants this, it should be his burden to switch it on, not my > burden to switch it off. > > Yes, of course. We should talk about burden when comes the time to > set and save preferences once. Just think how many clicks this means > in one's life. > > If you get your games from TWIC and Mark asks us to implement this and > it gets implemented, I wonder who's burden will it be to find another > free games provider. > > *** > > All in all, nothing much regarding a rational discussion. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > RSA(R) Conference 2012 > Mar 27 - Feb 2 > Save $400 by Jan. 27 > Register now! > http://p.sf.net/sfu/rsa-sfdev2dev2 > _______________________________________________ > Scid-users mailing list > Scid-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scid-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ RSA(R) Conference 2012 Mar 27 - Feb 2 Save $400 by Jan. 27 Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/rsa-sfdev2dev2 _______________________________________________ Scid-users mailing list Scid-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scid-users
