[HEADS-UP] systemd for F14 - the next steps

[Horst H. von Brand]

Lennart Poettering <mzerqung at 0pointer.de> wrote:

[...]

> Well, I think good UI means that you distuingish computer parsable and
> human readable tools. "status" is human readable. "show"/"check" are
> computer-parsable.

Mildly disagree. It is nice to be able to remember from people-use what the
output looks like when computer-parsing it. It is nasty if you have to
remember that foo(1)'s output is for human consumption, while scripts
should use bar(8). People will just go ahead and use foo(1), while bitching
all the time about its nasty format. Here find(1) shows a nice compromise:
You can make it spit out stuff in computer-friendlier format, but the
result is not _too_ far removed from its regular output.

> Human-readable stuff we want to indent and ellipsize to make it easily
> readable.

If it is text meant to be read rarely. But when you get used to some tool
(we aren't talking Aunt Tillie here!) the fact that (due to indentation,
text flowing and such) the one word you are looking for now has to be
searched for in random text doesn't help a bit. I.e., it is fine for
ps(1)'s manpage to be formatted for prettyness, it definitely isn't for
ps(1)'s output.

>           Computer-parsable stuff should be neither.

It must be easily readable anyway! Best part is that if done right, you
don't get to maintain several programs ;-)
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
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