From owner-freebsd-hackers  Sun Apr  7 14:42:07 1996
Return-Path: owner-hackers
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id OAA04485
          for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 7 Apr 1996 14:42:07 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from time.cdrom.com (time.cdrom.com [204.216.27.226])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAA04473
          Sun, 7 Apr 1996 14:42:02 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by time.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id OAA05088; Sun, 7 Apr 1996 14:41:38 -0700 (PDT)
To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
cc: hsu@freefall.freebsd.org (Jeffrey Hsu), gpalmer@freefall.freebsd.org,
        hackers@freefall.freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Netscape install of FreeBSD 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 07 Apr 1996 13:14:15 PDT."
             <199604072014.NAA00478@phaeton.artisoft.com> 
Date: Sun, 07 Apr 1996 14:41:38 -0700
Message-ID: <5086.828913298@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

> >   > specifically, Jordan and I talked a bit about using a WWW browser and
> >   > CGI scripts to create the configuration manager for post-install stuff
> >   > like adding/deleting users, changing /etc/sysconfig, etc.
> > 
> > I meant the install install, that is, click a button from Netscape
> > running in Windows or Linux and it goes off and partitions your drive,
> > downloads FreeBSD, installs it, sets up the boot manager, asks you some
> > questions and writes the appropriate files onto the newly created BSD ufs,
> > then reboots.
> > 
> > This is an example of network software distribution which everyone seems
> > to want to do with the web.
> 
> This is hard.
> 
> It's hard because thee is no standard extension for UNIX executables,

I don't think this is so much an issue.

You'll recall awhile back that I was calling for a general-purpose
library that would provide an "embedable HTTP server" for an
application, allowing you to specify your "HTML" in some higher-level
syntax that provided for genuine callbacks and such without having to
deal with any of the thoroughly disgusting form and entry field hacks.
You'd just say which entities you wanted in each document or
interaction screen and the library would interact with the HTTP port
like any other server, processing incoming requests and turning them
into standardised callbacks.

The reason I stopped dreaming about this and decided to punt the whole
idea was that I disliked the idea of using only the standard HTML
objects (text, entry fields, buttons, and so on) for doing my
interfaces.  How would I display the current disk layout, for example?
As rows of "X"'s or something?  Bleah!  ASCII art is your department,
not mine.. :-)

I would far prefer to generate gifs on the fly that represented pie
charts, colored bar graphs (representing the sizes of your various
partitions and free space) and such, but the idea of adding a
generalized rendering API to this whole thing finally brought me up
short with the realization that it was a whole 'nother engineering
project unto itself and I should probably just make the existing tools
work a little nicer before even contemplating such a massive project.

						Jordan