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Re: [Monotone-devel] url schemes


From: Philipp Gröschler
Subject: Re: [Monotone-devel] url schemes
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:41:07 +0100
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 (X11/20080229)

Markus Schiltknecht schrob:
Hm.. I see. But.. looking at the command line only, we could use whatever URL we want. We wouldn't have to use a URL at all. From a CLI users point of view, I'd even favor the current syntax for netsync. So what do you want a mtn:// url at all?

I just began to think alot about the feature when Timothy started the discussion on the "mtn:// sync" thread a few days ago. As it is with new features, they are likely to replace old behavior (though it is clear that the old syntax will be kept long enough to ensure backwards compatibility).

Since I am rather new into actually using monotone (and not only following its development progress) I wanted to adopt the new possibilities correctly. The old syntax is working for me as well, but learning only one (newer) syntax to the full could save valuable "brain capacity". Allright. So far. *cough*

Being able to use the same URL for the web interface, for monotone and for clever as well as dumb servers seems much more important to me, than sticking to "?" as a separator for no reason, except simplicity of coding it. Or put it another way: why should "/branch/" not be a better and more descriptive separator?

This is true of course, as long as there will always be only one specific /keyword/ between the host name and the rest of the path. And this even only for the argument of human readbility.

When it comes to simplicity, I personally would prefer that in the matter of usability over coding complexity. Not every programmer has that attitude, which is why we have lots of ugly user interfaces out there. But if I got you right (at least this time) then we seem to share that opinion.

But probably I'm just too focused on nuskool, having URLs like these in mind:

  http://www.xyz.org/revision/d558f906d0d597ac7ac01f891fe46f994dc0946c
  https://www.xyz.org/file/a5a5ce3a1ed7c9dead79c526e382237697d54c04

maybe even:
  ftp://www.xyz.org/branch/net.venge.monotone/botan/sha160.cpp

Any kind of separator other than '/' would just be disturbing there. Or do you really expect people to remember where to put the '?', before or after the 'branch' or 'revision'.

The more I look at this notation, the more I like it. Don't know what I had on mind when I started arguing for question marks and that other stuff. Let's forget about that!

I full heartedly agree. But I fail to see how multiple separators and intuition fit together. ;-)

Here again we're in the area of personal taste. As I do a lot of coding on web applications, I often think alot about how to hide the structure of a particular app. The common user really does not care much about how URLs look like, you're right, but some folks do. But that is going too far by now, and I don't want to earn the "Offtopic Award" in my first active week on the list ;-)

To become more technical again: when in some distant future these URL features become available, would it then be possible for just any application to connect to a running 'mtn serve' process via network, issue one or more HTTP requests and get the relevant answers, without the need for this application to speak netsync?




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