Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!sri-unix!gwyn@BRL-VLD.ARPA From: gwyn@BRL-VLD.ARPA Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: Multiple file versions -- FLAME ON!! Message-ID: <12554@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Mon, 1-Oct-84 17:44:22 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12554 Posted: Mon Oct 1 17:44:22 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 5-Oct-84 05:37:58 EDT Lines: 32 From: Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB)The idea of "UNIX for the masses" was never a good one. A much better concept is "UNIX underlying products for the masses". The standard UNIX interface was designed to support effective software development, not to be accessed directly by non computer professionals. The fact that secretaries et al. can nevertheless use it to do work is an accident, and from the resulting confusion about what UNIX "should" do, a regrettable accident. Talk to one of the UNIX text processing users some day and see just how well their model fits what is really happening; just the other day one of ours told me that she used "/dev/null" to check for eqn usage errors rather than "checkeq". (I finally determined that what she meant was "eqn ... >/dev/null".) The end user (as opposed to system developer) needs the sort of facilities that you have been describing. What we are objecting to is the imposition of these things on developers, who benefit most from the original UNIX design goals. Certainly there were missing functions in older UNIXes, and there are even some missing from the newest versions (there will probably always be more things to use computers for that are anticipated). However, the way to remedy this is to carefully design general, powerful solutions rather than just the first thing that comes to mind. Research 8th Edition UNIX has some improvements along these lines, some of which will appear in publicly-available UNIXes in the near future, but there is yet a ways to go. My main point is that "grafting on" features CANNOT maintain the design integrity; it takes inspired thought comparable to that put into the original UNIX design to obtain the desired elegance. Elegance is NOT just an aesthetic matter, but has real practical benefits (which I have made good use of in past projects).