Re: [DotGNU]flexible for users, or flexible for developers? (wasRe:User Interfaces)

[Timothy Rue]

On 16-Jul-02 13:19:28 Timothy Rue <address@hidden> wrote:
 TR> On 15-Jul-02 10:34:08 Norbert Bollow <address@hidden> wrote:

[snip]

 NB>> Timothy,
 NB>>   How do you propose to prevent this from degenerating into an
 NB>> interoperability + porting nightmare?

 NB>> Greetings, Norbert.

 TR> Hmmm.

 TR> I don't think it will be a problem. Or to be clear, in making it
 TR> easier for others to make up their own extensions with intent on
 TR> allowing others to use such extensions, then there would be
 TR> guidelines to follow to enable solving/preventing any problems of
 TR> such nature before such problems could be created.

Upon further inspection of the ECMA document (hey, I absorbed alot in the
scan over it I did, [450+ pages] but might have been to tired to recall
acronymns (not to mention spelling and typing error I've made in recent
post)......

I believe the CLS - Common Language Specifications is of such spirit as I
was writing about above.

I have also read more regarding different projects, MS's, Mono, corel,
Dotgnu such that I now understand that the ECMA document is supposedly
somewhat vague (not the sort of detail I'd pick up in scanning over the
document). I got this from some article I found the url to in some
slashdot comments.

And that such vagueness itself may be an indication of potential
incompatability injected by MS at perhaps a later date...... meaning there
may be stronger forces to cause mightmares than allowing individuals to
more easily create customextensions.

For whatever it is worth, the dotgnu effort, though lagging behind other
efforts, I believe may end up being the turtle that wins the race against
the rabbit.

I say this because dotgnu doesn't have to reinvent alot of what mono is
doing but instead has reason to focus more closely on what's important at
the core and perhaps streamline how others may make use of it.

Because GNU really is a result of many individual efforts and is strong
from distributed authority, it's important to support the "individual"
at the individual level.

Having read thru many of the dotgnu web pages and pages of the mono
project, etc., as an individual I have found the dotgnu pages to present a
much easier for me to understand introduction of what value such a
project may be to me in use, as a consumer and a producer.

The higher the level of complexity is, to understanding and using
something, the less there will be of "individuals" actually making use
of it.

Freedom is about the individual and on the level of the individual, right?

Although the vagueness of the ECMA document may leave room for
interpretation, it may also be motive to understand the underlying logic
and point of the technology so that an implimentation may be done better
than what the document describes. Somehow I reflect on the history of
computers where the first ones electric, where huge and not very number
crunching powerful in comparison to what we have today. And as such, the
same will evolve of what the ECMA document describes, that it will become
smaller, simpler to use and more powerful. Putting more power into the
hands of the "individual". But it is going to take a focus on enabling
the individual, to do this better.

---
Timothy Rue
Email @ mailto:address@hidden
Web @ http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/