Re: Some comments about Amaya 0.9a

Daniel Veillard <veillard@praslin.inrialpes.fr> écrit :
> 
> >first I have to say I've been using net$crap for two years now and I think
> >it's the best browser for an end-user like me (it's easy to use and
> >configure and it displays the page as it loads it).  But I'm a UNIX
> >freeware integrist too and I've been waiting for a free browser as good as
> >net$crap for some time now.  I thought Amaya would be a good choice but I
> >wonder now...
> 
>   Amaya is primarily an editor, not a browser ! Even if we tried to be as
> perfect a possible in showing pages, there are some limits. 

But Amaya's Web page says:

   Amaya is a Web client that acts both as a browser and as an authoring
   tool.

So, browser or editor?

> >Second, It seems Amaya is highly unconfigurable.  It doesn't seem to have a
> >.amayarc file or X resources.  All I found is the thot.ini file (which
> >really looks like a windoze file).  Hey, this is UNIX!
> 
>   Hey it was designed on Unix, but it's ported to Windows.

That's not a reason for all the versions of Amaya to use a thot.ini file
(by the way, why not amaya.ini?).  The UNIX version should use a .amaya
file and the windoze one whatever file that should make sense under
windoze.

> Anyway, the configuration syntax shouldn't matter as long as it's
> configurable.

It's not a problem about the syntax, but the name of the file.  I don't
want my home directory polluted with *.ini files :-)  UNIX traditionnally
uses dotfiles as configuration files (that's why ls(1) doesn't show them by
default).

> >  There's no such
> >thing as a dialog box to configure it either.
> 
>   As a Unix afficionado, I highly prefers a text configuration file
> than 10 popdown cascaded menus to setup a configuration parameter.

Me too.  I just think about the basic UNIX user (such as a new student).

> >Amaya doesn't understand basic X11 command line arguments such as
> >-geometry so I can't set the window size.
> 
>   Amaya id a multi-view editor, each view has it's own properties.
> You can set-up the geometry for these views in Amaya/amaya/HTML.conf file.
> Ok, this has not been integrated into the thot.ini file for now.

But this is a global configuration file.  What if each user of the system
want to set the size of her of his Amaya window?

> >How the scrollbar works is still a mystery for me.
> 
>   Ok, it's not perfect, next version will show an improvement.

:-)

> >Well it seems the Amaya team still has a lot of work to do before Amaya can
> >really be used by end-users...  And I'm still stuck with my net$crap.
> 
>   Concerning the end-user usability as a browser, I guess that there is
> a lot of work, yes, BUT this is not the main objective of the Amaya
> development. As said in http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Amaya/User/
> 
> "Amaya is intended to be a comprehensive client environment for testing
>  and evaluating new proposals for Web standards and formats."

But it should be useful anyway.

>   Of course the Amaya team would be very happy to see Amaya evolve up
> to be an end-user application, but this is not the primary target.

Then net$crap and mickey$oft will continue to add idiot tags (well, many
are already in HTML 3.2 and it seems strange to have them in parallel with
CSS1) to their proprietary HTML instead of thinking just a bit about how to
do the things right and they will impose these tags to the W3C (exactly as
happened with HTML 3.2).  The W3C needs a leading position in browser
technology as it will continue to appear as a pawn of net$crap and
mickey$oft.

>   I'm also wondering wether an Unix user can really be considered as an
> end-user, albeit I have been using (and promoting) Linux for nearly 5 years.
> I guess we could continue this debate on fr.comp.os.linux :-)

UNIX rules !
:-)

-- 
Marc Baudoin   -=-   <Marc.Baudoin@hsc.fr>
Hervé Schauer Consultants

Received on Monday, 23 December 1996 08:39:57 UTC