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Date:      Mon, 29 Sep 1997 15:14:14 +0930
From:      Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
To:        Wes Peters <softweyr@xmission.com>
Cc:        Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, chat@freebsd.org, mike@smith.net.au, sef@kithrup.com
Subject:   Re: Microsoft brainrot (was: r-cmds and DNS and /etc/host.conf) 
Message-ID:  <199709290544.PAA00459@word.smith.net.au>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 28 Sep 1997 23:35:31 CST." <199709290535.XAA22463@obie.softweyr.ml.org> 

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> existing system you have to do a search and replace.  With the mickey
> soft GUI, you have to click on every host and change it's IP address
> manually.  With the idealized, designed-by-Wes GUI tool, you simply
> change the network address for the domain and all of the hosts in that
> domain 'inherit' the new information.  If any of them conflict,
> i.e. you're changing from a class b to class c network and some host
> addresses are > 255, the tool warns you and displays the now-flawed
> hosts in a manner that signifies they are no longer working.  (Grey them
> out, put a red circle-slash over them, whatever.)

... and of course because the tool is able to talk to these hosts as 
well, it has previously verified that it has authorisation to change 
their addresses and will reconfigure them on the fly as part of the 
commit operation which brings the new DNS stuff online.  

Juliet's transaction management isn't that good yet, unfortunately, but 
it's pretty close.  (ie.  This *can* be done, and it's Not That Hard.)

> Don't forget that as you identify problems, it is possible to work out
> visually intuitive solutions to them.  Microsoft obviously cannot be
> bothered to do this, but we can.

I think, from looking at the MS stuff, that part of their problem is 
that the configuration UI is developed by the same people that wrote 
the code that it configures, thus there is no crossing of domains to do 
intuitive things.

> And Mike, if we can hook up with SEF's compatriot, I'd like to take a
> stab at this.  He is interested in turning out such a tool using Tk, so
> your Tcl experience may pay off here.  I've learned a little about Tcl,
> and want to learn more about Tk, and would very much like to do design
> work on this tool.

Sure.  I/we really need some push to move this along, and a consumer 
for Juliet (ie. Romeo) would help immensely.  You can grab the current 
state of play with it from ftp://smith.net.au/FreeBSD/juliet.tar.gz; 
note that you'll want to read the code to work it out, and please ask 
questions about it because I just haven't got enough of the design down 
in words yet.

mike





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