Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Low level vs. high level UI

[Robin Green]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 04:34:24PM -0700, Pierce T. Wetter III wrote:
>   It's been really apparent to me that while arch is pretty cool, its 
> being implemented by kernel types. Which means a:
> 
>    "basis set spanning the space" user interface
> 
>   That is, everything consists of these low level commands that are 
> then "assembled" as needed. However, low level commands are not 
> necessarily more convenient. As a consequence, people keep writing 
> scripts to automate things. However, if people have to write scripts to 
> get their work done, then that implies a certain amount of failure of 
> the UI as implemented to date, and lots of cruft like -S on some 
> commands (but not others...)
>
>  In order for arch to be accepted more widely, it has to have a much 
> smaller learning curve. The easiest way to do that is to have some 
> high-level commands that do the main tasks users actually do, with the 
> low-level commands left for the special cases.

I strongly agree.

I'd add a perhaps more subtle point: Tom says that 3rd-parties can
address this, which is true - and they do.

But there is something to be said for a canonical interface. Canonical,
"blessed" interfaces are attractive for a number of reasons, not least
that they are more likely to receive attention during development and
are less likely to become broken through neglect.

In the hope of contributing to getting better commands merged in, I
plan to do what might be a very small thing but hopefully nonetheless
a useful thing - a comprehensive page or three on the wiki, listing
every possible tla command and extension, with a short summary - one
page listing them in lexicographical order, and one sorted by category.
This will make it easier for everyone to see what's available,
hopefully - and maybe even promote better consistency.

-- 
Robin

Comment found in leaked MS code, in private\ntos\w32\ntuser\client\nt6\user.h:
"* The magnitude of this hack compares favorably with that of the national 
debt."

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