Re: [tlug] CLI admin how-to ideas?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "simon" == simon colston <simon@example.com> writes:

    simon> OK, maybe you wont be able to do as much through a
    simon> user-friendly interface, but you can certainly do a lot.

I don't see why this needs to be so.  You could apply the "literate
programming" idea, or maybe "extreme configuration".  Provide a config
file editor with context-sensitive help.  Convert the section 5 man
pages to something machine-parsable, preferably by arranging that they
be generated from the sources for the programs that parse the files.

Consider the GNU getopt interface or the X11 xrm resource manager, but
with docs integrated.  Or Emacs M-x customize.  A miscegenous affair
between Customize and libglade, maybe.

Add themability, with a couple of standard configs as examples.

But this is hard work, a big project.  Not something that the
configurator projects generally have much stomach for.  Consider the
politics involved in trying to get the upstream developers to conform
(although xrm is universal except in KDE and GNOME, and PAM has been
pretty successful).  Or that the Emacs config-cum-documentation system
has been about 10 years in the making, and that's just one app with a
very cohesive culture.

    simon> Elsewhere Stephen Turnbull described writing such an
    simon> interface as a "business opportunity" and there are several
    simon> projects trying to cater for this need.

*guffaw*  Not quite.  What I had in mind was the "Henry Ford"
configurator: "any disk partition you want, as long as the whole disk
is in /dev/hda1."  It works for Microsoft.



-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
              Don't ask how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.