Re: SEUL: Documentation: info & postscript

[Magnus Lycka <magnus.lycka@tripnet.se>]

>> 2.  With all the talk about GUI apps, etc, has anyone thought about simply
>> using a web browser?  Whats wrong with having httpd running on all boxes,
>> and using this as a backend for all configuration applications?  You could
>> even use it as a replacement for GNUs 'info', and possibly a replacement
>> for man pages as well..
>> 
>When everything's burning to the ground around you, you sure don't want an
>electrically controlled fire hydrant.  What if you want to read the
>manpages to configure or fix X?  Or the web server?  THen you're stuck
>with a useless idiotic system that bites the dust easily.  That's why I'm
>rigging seuladmin to use BOTH X and ncurses, just in case X windows is the
>thing that needs configuring(an oversight redhat made with their
>control-panel, IMHO).  Also, having everything by HTTP would present
>security holes for administration, and people'd be REALLY frustrated when
>things got hairy and they couldn't get at their docs.  TTYL!

For manuals and other information HTML is in my opinion optimal.
Using any other format than HTML and pure text files in case there
isn't resources to convert them is in my opinion a mistake. There are
tools to convert both texinfo files and man files to HTML, and new Linux
documentation ought to be written using Linuxdoc / SGML tools.

HTML files can be read in X or in text mode with Emacs, Lynx and many
other tools with or without a running web server. I would imagine other
environments such as something graphical under SVGA or GGI etc to be
rather far away from the mainstream. Do people seriously use there
environments?

I think it would also be convenient if other applications used the same
interface, but obviously HTML lacks full interactive power and brings you
back to something fairly oldfashioned and batch oriented, where nothing
happens until you have filled in and submitted your entire screen. Still,
for many applictations such as configuring applications or monitoring
system status this might be sufficient.

I agree that it's very good to have both text and graphical UI to the apps.
It seems to me that Python is a very convenient language for this kind of
applications and Redhat's approach with Tkinter is probably a good way to
go for X. If we restrict ourselves to a reasonably simple user interface
standard it should be possible to write for instance Python apps that could
be run through X/Tkinter, Web browser or in text mode using different
wrappers. 

	Magnus

--
Magnus Lycka, Folktrov. 6C, 907 51 Umea, Sweden
+46(0)90 198 498, magnus.lycka@tripnet.se, www1.tripnet.se/~mly

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