On 2011-02-02 11:04 AM, Chris Palmer wrote: > Tahoe-LAFS, et c. are just plain hard to explain because > there is so much going on. "Oh sure, you can mount it like > a normal filesystem. Just use the FUSE module that > implements SFTP to talk to your gateway which in turn... Oh > well there are some semantic impedance mismatches... Well > of course you'll need the FUSE kernel module, didn't I > mention that? Have you tried the WUI? ... No, the WUI, not > the gateway..." > > I wish you guys would take a hard turn toward the nvi > mentality. Then you'd have less to explain, and people > would have less to understand. (I don't advocate going into > cat territory.)
nvi is not exactly famous for user friendliness either. You have doubtless heard the argument that nvi causes brain damage, in that once someone has learned to use nvi effectively, there is no room left in his brain for anything else. Also, like a combination chain saw, tuning fork, pocket knife, nail file, and jackhammer, nvi is so remarkably powerful that almost any random sequence of keystrokes is likely to do something dramatic, surprising, and hard to predict without a fair bit of thought. One should always start design from the user interface, and start design of the user interface with the user interface for the most basic, simple, common and important operations, rather than acquiring a user interface as an afterthought and the result of a series of accidents. > 1. It's a FUSE program. The end. You mount a filesystem, > and then browse around. The UI is whatever your current > filesystem UI is. Mismatch. Browsing works, but manipulation has subtle differences. > 2. There are clients and there are servers. There are no > gateways, introducers, WUI servers, helpers, et c. Most of these things turn up as a result of the need to pass capabilities around. Clients and servers are only sufficient if your client already has its capabilities. So far no one has proposed a capability system wherein capabilities are usefully and conveniently shared between several people, which is a serious flaw since capabilities are most useful when you want have interactions between several people, and administration and setup always requires passing some capabilities around. You always wind up needing to pass capabilities around, and the methods for doing so always turn out to be surprising, cumbersome, and unexpected. Typically you copy and paste a long incomprehensible text string from some place to another place. No one has proposed a nice clean system for passing capabilities around, except in the vaguest and most general fashion. _______________________________________________ tahoe-dev mailing list [email protected] http://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev
