i'm trying to pound the CGI library for the network i manage into
reasonable shape, and part of that is trying to figure out what people
really use. there are dozens of variations on basic scripts in among the
dregs of the cgi-bin directories, and i honestly don't know which of them
are being used. what i want, being the wild-eyed code fanatic i am, is a
set of scripts, built from the same code base, which cover the range of
services 90% of my users will actually want to put in place.
i have package listings from Selena Sol and Matt Wright, but building a
service list from those is what i call "jumping to solutions". i don't
want to compile a list of stuff various coders have decided to provide,
because those packages already make assumptions about what the user wants.
if i just collect the packages, i inherit the assumptions as well, and i'd
prefer to start at the other end of the process.
what i want is the primitive feature set of things people want a CGI to be
able to do.. "read form data", "write a file", "send an email message", for
instance. at the same time, it's good to have a list of general
descriptions that don't say anything about implementation.. "calendar
script", "threaded discussions", and so forth. the goal is to build a
batch of tinkertoy code that does the low-level stuff, and plug the pieces
together to meet the high-level purpose.
hmm.. upon a careful rereading of that last paragraph, i've decided that i
don't really know what i want after all.
that's okay.. if you can state what you want clearly, you're 90% of the way
to a finished design. obviously, i'm not that far yet, so it's time to
drop back and do some more analysis, also known as "collecting questions
until they start chatting among themselves."
if anyone out there wants to chip in a couple cybercreds of opinion on what
i'm talking about, i'll sorta point and grunt until we've nailed down the
topic, then we can start picking our way toward a solution.
mike stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 'net geek..
been there, done that, have network, will travel.
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done
directly from our website for all our lists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
