Re: Application Idea

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Mon, Jun 05, 2000 at 06:06:38PM -0700 or thereabouts, R. Jason Valentine wrote:
> I believe this mailing list allows general discussion about Gnome -
> including application ideas.  If not, I apologize in advance for this
> post.

Sure.

> Basically, I want a single program that can easily enable all the
> capabilities of my voice/fax/modem.

[snipped three very different things]

(Well, I think they're very different.) The reason this wonder-program
doesn't exist is probably due to the unix philosopy of lots of little
programs which each do one thing, well.

When I read email, the mail was transferred to my machine by one 
program, run through procmail to dump it to different files, I run
a mail user agent which I told where to look for the different files,
I can invoke a separate program (at the console, if necessary) to
look at any URLs mentioned in it, the pager is either the mailer's
default, 'more', or 'less', the editor is whatever I set it to, it
uses one of two different libraries depending on how I configure
it, and the encryption/verification stuff can be whichever program
I tell it to be. That's a -lot- of different small programs pulling
together, and we haven't got onto some of the other bits. 

This is a very different approach from what I understand of Windows
applications, which tend to be one single giant app. 

Lots of GNOME programs appear to be arriving to do lots of different
things which traditionally under UNIX were separate. In fact, there's
a whole bunch of Linux programs which are the same. The obvious
example is the system configuration tool, whether it's linuxconf or
YaST.

I'm not saying either is better. I personally prefer the "lots of little 
programs" because I can get inventive about which program I pipe the 
results of then where I please, and I have the time to waste learning
such things. Other people find the convenience of one overall program
simpler. 

But that's probably why your hoped-for program doesn't exist :) I can
think of various apps that concern themselves with parts of what you're
talking about, but none which do the lot.

And yes, applications such as Evolution and Mozilla (to pick GNOME and
non-GNOME ones) do blur this approach a -lot-. The last I knew, Mozilla
even includes an IRC client in it. This is doubtless cool for some people,
but I shall be removing it because I have one little simple program for
IRC, another for email, and another for browsing, but alas that doesn't
do pictures or frames -- for which former I use wget :)

Telsa "still looking for a use for 'paste 1', a perfect example of one
simple program..."