[Seaside-dev] Re: encoded stream

[Julian Fitzell]

On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 6:18 PM, Philippe Marschall
<philippe.marschall at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm all in favor of reducing confusion. However I would prefer
> something simple than a super generic approach that allows you to
> configure everything when in the end you only have two different
> scenarios. These two are you want conversion from an external encoding
> to Smalltalk or you want to use your external encoding as your
> internal one. so your internal encoding can be either Smalltalk or
> your external one.

At least for me personally, I find the generic approach simpler. The
configuration documents the behaviour: "this is what we output and
what we assume as default for input; this is what we deal with
internally". I'm not suggesting we actually need to support every
possible combination of encodings, either (though once you've
implemented it, I'm not sure it's any harder to do so).

My sense is that the only people who understand this stuff at all,
understand it in terms of encodings so by trying to "simplify" we
actually end up hiding the familiar part and making it harder to
understand because the terms are unfamiliar.

There could always be a wizard-like interface for people who don't get
it that asks you a couple of questions and sets the appropriate
encodings.

Julian