Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2011 18:39:12 -0500 From: Gary Gatten <Ggatten@waddell.com> To: "'perrin@apotheon.com'" <perrin@apotheon.com>, "'freebsd-questions@freebsd.org'" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: HAL must die! Message-ID: <32277_1300491553_4D83ED21_32277_485_1_D9B37353831173459FDAA836D3B43499BD354B85@WADPMBXV0.waddell.com> In-Reply-To: <20110318231301.GA21827@guilt.hydra>
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Although all very interesting and entertaining, how much will it cost me to=
kill this thread and any concepts mentioned herein for at least 30 days? =
At minimum, haven't we strayed quit a bit from the OP and as such this "wor=
thwhile" discussion should be a new thread? Just sayin'....
----- Original Message -----
From: Chad Perrin [mailto:perrin@apotheon.com]
Sent: Friday, March 18, 2011 06:13 PM
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: HAL must die!
On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 10:36:41PM +0100, Michel Talon wrote:
> Chad wrote:
> >
> > Everybody who thinks it's a good idea (by way of analogy) to write
> > command line utilities that default to not letting you specify any
> > options at all, and if you use one option to do something non-default
> > you have to specify *all* options even when the specification is
> > exactly the same as the default -- raise your hands.
>=20
> In fact i am just now writing something which does that: either mostly
> automatic, or with full "expert" options if you know what you are
> doing. There is no real middle ground, in my opinion, and i just don't
> like the Unix style commands, with tons of options and unscrutable man
> pages. I think this Unix approach has not led to considerable adoption,
> generally. To come back to HAL, i have been usually happy with HAL. You
> just have to know that if you want to modify some simple X
> configuration (typically change the keyboard language) you have to do
> it in a HAL config file, not in xorg.conf. The only problem is that
> the HAL config files are in xml crap, not in usual form. In fact the
> main HAL problem is a documentation problem, like for many other softs.
> How many new features of FreeBSD are correctly documented presently?=20
Wait -- what? Really?
Let's say your application has the following options with defaults:
foo: one
bar: two
baz: three
qux: four
Let's say someone wants qux to be five instead of four. Are you saying
you're writing your application to *force* them to specify *all four*
configuration settings, even when three of them are default? Are you
further saying you're doing this because you think it's a good idea from
a UI standpoint, and not just out of laziness?
--=20
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
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