Re: spatial stuff detail

[Guido Schimmels <guido schimmels freenet de>]

Am 23.09.2003 17:57:25 schrieb(en) Hongli Lai:
> Guido Schimmels wrote:
>
> > I'll repeat my claim that 90% of libraries are not used by more than  
> > 1- 3 apps. Only of those I'm talking. When there are 6 apps using a   
> > library, 2 of them will break when you upgrade the library. Fact of   
> > life. How do distributors solve this problem traditionally? Upgrade   
> > those 2 apps together with the library.
>
>
> Or how about using libtool versioning?

Then you have 3 incompatible versions in /usr/lib, used by one  
application each. Why not keeping it together with the apps then?
That's my point all long. What's the point of shared resources which  
don't get shared?
But as Debian packagers think duplicate libraries are evil, they will  
repackage such that your little security update will end up 50M big.

Not to speak about the theory and practice of backwards compatibility.
You can't put the new library in the repository until you have checked  
it with every single app which depends on it. That puts an excessive  
burden on the distributor. That doesn't scale. Better let the  
application developer care for the obscure libraries he uses. He also  
has probably better means of testing the new library version - like  
unit tests he uses for regular development.


> > Cleaning up? For ROX-apps: rm -r ~Choices/<Appname>.
> > That is why hiding the settings is __BAD__.
>
>
> Dad: "Hm... what's this Choices folder?" (looks)
> Dad: "Huh? It's full of confusing files. Why do I need this?" (hits  
> Delete)
>
> This is not the only example. A lot people randomly delete important/ 
> unknown folders. A friend of mine ended up saving all his documents  
> in C:\Program Files\Windows System Drivers just to prevent his dad  
> from randomly deleting them. Of course, he made sure that his dad  
> understand that if you mess with drivers you will mess up your  
> computer. If he didn't explain that, his dad will have undoubtedly  
> deleted that folder too.

Always worked for MacOS and RiscOS. I wonder why. Maybe because those  
systems where designed so simple that every user could easily  
understand what each folder is for? Windows users are full of fear to  
do something wrong, because Windows is a mysterium to them. Fear has  
never been a good advisor.

But I'll even give you a better solution to the problem. Let the file- 
manager check if the user wants to do something stupid. When the user  
tries to delete the settings folder, pop up a dialog:
"This folder contains your application preferences!"
"If you delete this folder, you will lose all your settings!"
[Delete anyway] [Don't delete]

And as a side-effect, your friend's dad now knows what the folder is  
good for. Isn't that great! Knowing where his preferences are, he can  
even conciously decide to back them up or create an account for his  
young daughter with the same setting for the most important apps.
Ignorance is bliss? I don't think so.