On 25/11/2007, Ken Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Nov 19, 2007, at 3:59 AM, Adam Kennedy wrote: > > > > I for one think "recommends" is a stupid idea, since it's > > completely ambiguous and doesn't add anything of interest to the > > toolchain > > The same could be said for 'abstract', but that doesn't make it useless. > > It's just an advisory statement to the user that functionality will > be somehow enhanced if these other things are installed. How the > user or their tools deals with that information is up to them. >
That would seem to be something of a cop out. We're giving users (most of the tools hand off to the users themselves) options and decisions to make without necessarily equipping them with the ability to make those decisions. More to the point, with recursion, we're potentially interrupting them continuously. I had one sysadmin at work complain to me that some installs are getting rediculous. Whenever he installs something he has to keep Google open on another screen so he can try to work out what the hell the questions and options and features all mean. And if he makes a mistake, most of the time he ends up just reinstalling the OS because he can't reliable fix the Perl install.
