« Welcome to my blog. Now go home. | Main | Nonfunctional Functional Tests, and iGet 2.0a691 »
August 22, 2005
The path of least resistance
Yesterday saw the private test release of iGet 2.0a687. This is more or less analogous to "beta 2" and I think we won't have so many more test versions before we have a stable release.
The big change from the previous test release is Automator support, and some (pretty basic) AppleScript support. These features were not phased into our previous test releases because we needed time to test the various changes we had to make to support adding these features. The last major feature to be added will be the (overhauled) Dash Board, oops I mean Dashboard widget, which is largely separate from the app itself.
As always, as we come towards the end of a release cycle, I can't help but start thinking about the next release. One thing that these cool new features make me want to do is overhaul iGet's notion of a path.
Normally, a path is something like this:
/Applications/iGet.app
/Volumes/MyOtherHardDisk/Cool Programs/iGet.app
In the old Mac days, it was (and still in some legacy apps) like this:
Macintosh HD:Applications:iGet.app
MyOtherHardDisk:Cool Programs:iGet.app
But, in iGet, we made the choice to do them like this:
/Macintosh HD/Applications/iGet.app
/MyOtherHardDisk/Cool Programs/iGet.app
At the time, it made sense. Or so we (OK, I) thought. In iGet 1.x, the user never dealt with paths directly; they used the GUI. Showing the name of the hard disk at the start of the path seemed more intuitive (indeed, that's why the Mac did it that way originally). But with iGet 2's new features, you might want to manually specify paths in an AppleScript or Automator action for transferring files. Or, you might want to use the new URL support, and this:
iget://mason.fivespeed.com/Users/mason/whatever
...is a lot more sensible than this:
iget://mason.fivespeed.com/Macintosh%20HD/Users/mason/whatever
...especially for users already accustomed to working with paths and URLs. (As it stands, in iGet 2.0 you need to use the latter.)
I'd hoped to address this for 2.0, but we're out of time. It's not a huge change, but too big for the 2.0 time frame. But for 2.x I'd like to make iGet's notion of a path mesh with the POSIX standard. iGet already uses some "smart" path interpretation in some places; if you "Go to Folder" and enter "/etc/" it will figure out that you meant a POSIX path, not an iGet path.
But iGet paths were a design mistake that I look forward to fixing.
[Living In Love by I Wayne]
Posted by mason at August 22, 2005 07:09 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.fivespeed.net/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/ktown/managed-mt/mt-tb.cgi/1
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference The path of least resistance:
» airline tickets from airline tickets
airline tickets [Read More]
Tracked on November 3, 2005 03:19 PM
» testanchor757 from testanchor735
testcomment6 [Read More]
Tracked on November 19, 2005 09:11 AM
» finasteride from finasteride
finasteride [Read More]
Tracked on November 23, 2005 02:12 AM
» pregnancy week by week from pregnancy week by week
checkout pregnancy plan,pregnancy calendar and pregnancy week by week [Read More]
Tracked on November 23, 2005 03:29 AM
» cheap ticket from cheap ticket
cheap ticket [Read More]
Tracked on November 29, 2005 03:40 AM
» Payday Loans from Payday Loans
Bad Credit Payday Loans is the best-bloges. [Read More]
Tracked on November 29, 2005 03:40 PM
Comments
Hey mon,
The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the colon, and the tyranny of evil backslash.
Anyway, you are right that adhering to standard UNIX notion of path is best if user manipulate path by human self. (I think I told you that in Reno in 2003 further more, *laugh*.)
BTW, I hate to see my people fighting and swimming in blood, too. Waiting for iGet 2!!!
Posted by: Nasib at August 18, 2005 03:57 AM
Mason, you are funnier when you're drunk.
Posted by: Chris at August 18, 2005 04:29 AM
How can you tell he's not drunk?
Posted by: Anon E. Mous at August 22, 2005 06:15 AM