Russell Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>The value of a GUI is not that it's graphical, nor that it's colorful,
>nor that it uses the whole screen. It's that it allows the user to
>merely recognize the right answer rather than having to recollect it
>Command completion, originally used in tops-20, and most often seen in
>kermit, and cisco routers these days, is a reasonable compromise
>between a full gui and the typical incompetent command line most
>Unices use.
Ah, TOPS-20. My first job, back in '85, was admin'ing a DEC 20. It's a
shame VMS didn't incorporate command completion. I'm also suprised
nobody's retrofitted it to Linux via readline. Precious few programs
even use readline. How handy would filename completion and command
recall be in an ftp client?
>Every user interface should be dumbed down, so we can use our
>intelligence to solve other problems.
I don't think "dumbed down" is the right term. Perhaps "improved" or
"streamlined".
There's no reason one couldn't layer an improved UI over qmail: either
a web GUI (some of which has already been done) or a CLI-based
"qmail-ctl" shell with command completion.
In fact, I think it would be *better* to layer such an interface on
top, than to incorporate it into qmail, because that's more in keeping
with the modular nature of qmail.
-Dave
