Calum Benson wrote: > On Thu, 2007-02-22 at 17:09 -0800, Michael Hunter wrote: > >> On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 17:03:35 +0000 >> Calum Benson <Calum.Benson at Sun.COM> wrote: >> >> [...] >> >>> 5.0 VPN >>> >>> - I really don't see much (any?) benefit in providing a VPN GUI if the >>> user needs to know about things like command line options and processes >>> to use it. I was expecting to see something more like OS X's VPN config >>> tool, I guess; if we can't/don't support that sort of thing, I'm not >>> sure I'd bother including this tab at all for a first release. (Either >>> that or I'd turn it into a tab just for managing Solaris punchin >>> connections, rather than any random VPN-type thing the user cares to >>> add... but never having used punchin I have no idea what that would look >>> like, or how useful it would be.) >>> >> The underlieing mechanism here is the ability to specify an external >> program you want to run which modifies the network environment. Our >> working example of these are VPNs. We call these ENMs in the design >> document but Ann refused to use that term (and rightly so). Maybe >> reducing that down to labeling that concept "VPN" in the GUI was going >> to far though. >> >> I think its very important that we provide this sort of hook for users >> to be able to do these types of things. That will include being able >> to integrate punchin support. >> > > Hmm, perhaps, still not really convinced though. If you look at OSX, > despite its UNIX underpinnings, there is just nowhere a user is ever > asked to locate UNIX commands or config files, let alone understand what > they're for[1]. > > This does mean that there's some stuff you just can't do outside of a > terminal, but IMHO that's a better approach than trying to pass off a > few text boxes into which you can type some UNIX commands as a "GUI"-- a > terminal is a much better UI for doing command-line stuff than a dialog > box ever will be. > Calum makes some good points. If we have some more value add for the user, such as being able to configure commonly used VPNs (or other of these "network environment modifying" apps) and provide some defaults, then it might be useful (and maybe still consider allowing user to enter their own custom command line if they don't use one of the common VPN apps). Right now we're allowing the user to shoot themselves in the foot by putting in whatever command they want, and/or open the door for them to blame NWAM if some of their networking apps they "register" with NWAM aren't working..
Ann
