[ruby-talk:6117] Re: What would a Ruby browser look like? -- It's Just a View!

Hugh Sasse thundered from Mt. Olympus:

> People are already talking about using Tk to do this, or doing it as a WWW
> page.  Please hold your horses! :-)  These are just "views".  No doubt the
> Emacs enthusiasts among us would like a textual version tied in to Emacs.
> People using Braille displays won't be too impressed by graphics, and
> people using Windows may not want a Command Line Interface.  There may
> even be deafblind programmers accessing the system through Morse Code!
> Please let's think about what this will DO before we think about what it
> will *look* like. :-)

Well, if you check the order of all my preceding posts, I think you will see
that the issues were raised in that order. But what you dismiss as "just"
views can have a tremendous impact on whether users like the system or not.
And since the primary purpose of proposing this project was to promote Ruby,
it had better be a likable system, regardless of how cosmic its abstract
design is. I think it's also a safe bet that 90+% of the potential market
for such a system doesn't want a pure text interface or a Morse Code
interface. It doesn't hurt to have a rough idea of what practical
constraints you will likely face.

(There are a few pairs of applications that readily come to mind that
essentially DO the same thing in approximately the same ways, but where one
of each pair is very obnoxious to use and the other of each pair is nice to
use, mainly due to what appears to have been greater concern with look and
feel from the outset.)

> One of the ideas of XP is don't decide now what you can decide later.
> Also concepts like "Accessibility" and "Universal Design" come to mind.

Well OK, if we are going to all be driven to worship the golden calf of XP,
doesn't that involve some degree of incremental implementation-informed
design? And test as you go. Seems kind of hard to test an OO browser without
some means of putting up pixels--at least for a mere mortal like me. And
some real-world concepts like "Practical", "Limited Resources",
"Cost/Benefit", and the "80-20 Law" also come to mind. (Not to mention
barging their way to the front of the pack :-)

So anyway, what do you want it to do?

Conrad