2008-03-28 01:33Is Hotwire the best piece of software yet?The short answer is “no”, in case you are happy to just take my word for it and don’t have time to read my justification for this view. A slightly longer answer would be “Hotwire version 0,710 would be the best piece of software ever (until the next best piece of software ever comes out) if a finite number of bugs were fixed and a finite number of relatively simple features were added.” Many of the bugs and features missing are related to the usability of the user interface, which is to some extent a matter of taste, but there are usability improvements that can be made based on certain widely accepted metrics. Below, then, I give a mixture of a review, an infestation(?) of bug reports, and a design concept. Bugs? And feature requestsI have done a reasonably thorough trawl of the project’s bug reports and not found any of my complaints listed. I could swamp the bug tracker with multiple bugs all at once, but I thought I should try starting a conversation first, to see if I’m thinking along the right lines. If my conception of what Hotwire is supposed to be is completely at odds with that of the main developers, then my bug reports should be answered with a stock “You’ll have to fork the code.” response. Anyway, here, in no particular order, are my questions and concerns.
UI ideasThe rest of my comments concern an incomplete vision I have for Hotwire’s user interface, and the specific alterations that would have to be made to conform the current design to it. Most of these ideas are independent of each other and could be recycled into other designs if people had better ideas. The main principle underlying my changes is that the web browser / file manager UI conventions are well known, and if they were applied to Hotwire they would make its UI more easily learnable.
ConclusionIt is a joy to see such an important project progress so quickly. I would love to see this software reach a version 1,0 that everyone can be proud of, and maybe then a community would form around it who could write introductory manuals and produce videos explaining how to use the command line, aimed at Unix novices. Imagine trying to explain to someone the logic of having progressively less of the tail end of the output from their previous command being visible just above where they are entering their current command. “Well… there used to be these things called teletype machines…” Now, do any bug tracking systems allow bulk input of bugs? How would a project evolve if you hooked up some spamming software to the email interface of its bug tracker and the developers didn’t realise? Trackbacks
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With great software projects, the developers can predict how their users are going to react to their software, and can respond to concerns before they are even raised. In the case of Hotwire, the developers have already answered my questions "What are the technical limitations preventing the Hotwire features being available in a HotSSH session? What if some of the code was refactored out to run on the remote end?" with a page on their wiki about remoting.
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