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

[Jeremy Shaw]

At Wed, 25 Feb 2004 01:16:38 +0000,
Robin Green wrote:
> 
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> 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.

Indeed. If I am not mistaken, one of the long-term goals of the Arch
and Pika projects is to create something name itla, which would make
it easy to write high-level, interactive interfaces to tla.

Jeremy Shaw.