[OT] Debian mailinglists [was: RE: Debian or Ubuntu?]

[Derek Broughton]

Avi Greenbury wrote:

> On Tue, 20 May 2008 11:44:22 +0300
> "Dotan Cohen" <dotancohen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> This is a good point. There a lots of applications configurable this
>> way, and I very much like them. This is a linear approach: you finish
>> with one question, move on to the next, answer another,... the user
>> cannot forget a step and finish the process.
> 
> That's fine, until I want to change only the answer to the penultimate
> question.

Why should that be a problem?  A good interface will let you get there
simply, without trashing all the other answers.  You're complaining that
the interfaces you've used are lacking, rather than presenting an argument
that they're intrinsically wrong.
> 
> That kind of interface should be available. It should _never_ be the
> *only* interface.

In an ideal world, it _should_ be the only interface.  In an ideal
interface, all questions are asked, all answers are validated, and only
valid configurations are saved.  There is probably no such thing as an
ideal interface, but that's the only reason why we need to be able to edit
configs by hand.
-- 
derek