Text 11392, 54 rader
Skriven 2008-03-19 13:57:04 av Jeff Bowman (1:229/500)
  Kommentar till text 11389 av Maurice Kinal (1:261/38)
Ärende: Re: web interfaces are inferior and overbloated
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MK> Just a follow up to my last post;
 
MK> "wget http://www.fidonet.m.nu/echomail/area/LINUX/11385" resulted in a
MK> file 15080 bytes in size.  "lynx http://www.fidonet.m.nu/echomail/area/LI
MK> NUX/11385" and then dumping that to text reproduced the wgetted file but
MK> without tags and was 4627 byes.  Just cutting and pasting the actual
MK> message takes up exactly 221 bytes.
 
MK> You can keep the stinkin' www!!!  The linux terminal will outclass the
MK> www any day of the week.  Also any other terminals are likely to be
MK> inferior but not as inferior as web applications no matter what OS.
 
The linux terminal isn't comparable to a web browser interface, for numerous
reasons.  Particularly is that the browser is not capable of a text interface
in the traditional sense, requiring most everything to be clickable, which in
and of itself requires a way of identifying what's interactive.
 
By the way, just the act of using a mouse with a linux console is debatable by
"purists", but that kind of stuff is just silly.  A mouse provides a huge
productivity boost in my opinion.
 
Anyway, the WWW is also capable of a wide range of ways of displaying text and
linking documents with one another, not to mention imagery and embeddable
content.  This allows for a much different experience than a text console
provides.
 
Most importantly, all of this requires some sort of markup language to indicate
what parts of a document are interactive. Tags take space, there's no way
around it. And yet while you might complain about this trivial fact, take a
look at some linux help files. Or Perl's POD files.  Or any type of document
displayable on the linux console.  They're all naturally more bloated than
plain text would be. Not necessarily to the same degree as HTML, because they
all lack the capabilities it does, but more bloated nonetheless.
 
That's not to mention the fact that the web handles more than just HTML now,
thanks to stylesheets and javascript, all of which allow more capability. These
add to the page size.
 
I really just don't see what the issue is.  I love the web and developing for
it.  In fact, I usually develop and debug sites remotely from a linux console
window in VIM on the same server the site runs from.
 
Both interfaces have their advantages and disadvantages, as well as differing
capabilities.  I wouldn't give up one for the other. So comparing them is
practically pointless.  Besides, the majority of the world has no use to ever
open any form of console window these days for their daily computing needs,
because they don't need any of the capabilities it provides.  So arguing that a
console window is better is like saying VHS is better than DVD.  VHS still has
some advantages, but DVD is what everyone else uses and has all the snazzy
menus and such.  Nobody is going to listen if you try to say VHS is better. 
And more importantly, it just doesn't matter.

--- D'Bridge 2.99
 * Origin: FyBBS (1:229/500)