Date: Mon, 13 Jan 1997 13:27:47 -0700 From: Warner Losh <imp@village.org> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>, config@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Config Manifesto comments? Message-ID: <E0vjsyx-0005Bj-00@rover.village.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 12 Jan 1997 22:42:29 PST." <15352.853137749@time.cdrom.com> References: <15352.853137749@time.cdrom.com>
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In message <15352.853137749@time.cdrom.com> "Jordan K. Hubbard" writes: : Right. And, unfortunately, there are also very few people around who : are implementing UIs from the 2nd school these days - not even us : (just look at most of sysinstall's "forms"). It's just harder, as a : general rule, to provide frameworks which do on-the-fly validation of : user input. It's not impossible, and I've written forms packages : which provided for both, it's just harder. javascript and/or java should be able to bridge this gap for the most part. You can easily do validation, have some fields affact other fields, etc. Java isn't a bad language when progamming in the small. : > HTML, by its very nature, restricts you to School One, except at the : > most anally restrictive end of the implementation scale, where you : > have sacrificed any attempt at integration and are basically asking : > questions one-by-one. : : I don't buy that. I think of it as more akin to a hypercard stack. : Annoyingly page-based, often stupidly organized, but you can still : cluster things by concept. My top networking page is going to have a : list of all my networking service types, with pointers to other : documentation at the bottom (HTML *does* allow you to do a nice job of : integrating your relevant documentation with the actual installation : procedures, if you plan for that in advance and Do It Right). I click : on, say, DNS Services and I get a sub-page allowing me to add, delete, : query or change entries, or maybe just figure out what DNS is at all : and why I'd want to set it up (links to tutorials and such). Yes. Adding java to the mix would also give you the power of the markup language HTML (which can do a lot of things right) with the ability to do basic, nice UI things as well. Not perfect, mind you, but better than just raw HTML. Of course you do lose the ability to do this from non-java enabled browers (unless you also validate stuff on the server side). : Now if you asked me those same questions about an HTML based system, I : could answer them without much thought. One of the advantages of a : highly-constrained system is that it makes most of the implementation : decisions pretty obvious. :-) :-). : Why don't we work from first principles and define the system in terms : of its objectives rather than debating this on a purely ethereal : plane? What do we want to see here, and what should it look like? I'd like to see the system be able to do the following things. I have opinions on HOW they should be done, but I'll leave it and focus on WHAT: 1) Anything that can currently be done with sysconfig should be handled. Interfaces, running/not running certain daemons, etc etc. 2) All DNS magic should be done for a DNS client (a server would be harder, but doable). 3) Add/delete/flambe users, groups 4) Handle adding/removing new hardware to the system, including disks. This may require the ability to rewrite config files and rebuild a kernel. 5) NFS setup and configuration 6) Add and delete new interfaces and/or new dialup connections. 7) Configure modems and/or getty for dialin, dialout and hardwired lines. And likely a lot of other stuff that isn't leaping to my brain at the moment. Warner
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