Re: [Setup-tool-hackers] Network interfaces configuration.

[Joakim Ziegler <joakim helixcode com>]

On Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 06:24:42PM -0600, Arturo Espinosa Aldama wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Nov 2000, Hr. Hans Petter Jansson wrote:

>> I think we should make a deliberate distinction between fixed networking and
>> telephony connections. ppp[0-9] are virtual adapters at best, and I'm against
>> virtual adapters in Networking.
 
> But why? Should the end-user bare with this distinction between virtual
> and non-virtual?

>From a GUI and usability perspective, it seems there will be very few shared
GUI elements between the normal networking and dialup networking configs.

While standard networking deals with things like what ethernet adapter, what
IP, what gateway, and optionally DHCP to set everything but the network
adapter, dialup deals with concepts such as what phone number, username and
password, and optionally what DNS (practically never setting the IP and
gateway), and some times handling chat scripts, etc.

It seems to me that trying to force these two into the same mold won't do
much good (they'll have to be two completely different GUIs anyway, perhaps
being two tabs in a notebook view). Also, I think it's mostly divided up in
the users' mental model of how things work. The model used in Windows, where
you add an "adapter" that's either PPP or Ethernet, and then add protocols on
top of that, etc., is broken, and non-intuitive.

The Mac, on the other hand, handle them separately, and seems to do a much
better job.

(A lot of this is opinion, but I think it makes sense).

-- 
Joakim Ziegler - Helix Code web monkey - joakim@helixcode.com - Radagast@IRC
      FIX sysop - free software coder - FIDEL & Conglomerate developer
            http://www.avmaria.com/ - http://www.helixcode.com/

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