On Mon, Sep 27, 2004 at 08:41:16PM -0400, Michael MacFadden wrote: > Plenty of web apps do not separate configuration from presentation at > all which tends to make maintenance a nightmare. Streamline however has > only 1 configuration file which has about 5 lines in it that set up the > connection to a database back end. So I have tried to address that > issue because I have run into that with other packages and found it > dissatisfying as well. This is good to know, and perhaps this comment will inspire someone to take a look at your package and consider sponsoring it. (But not me, since as I mentioned, my reasons for not sponsoring are not solely limited to my initial reaction to the package.) > As far as the web app only being supported on a handful of servers, > that should be taken care of by the package dependencies. There is > plenty of packages in Debian that rely on certain other packages. I > don't see how this is different. The issue is that providing a package for a webapp that only integrates with certain webserver packages in Debian splits the userbase between those who have a reason to want to use your package, and those who have to do the integration work themselves anyway and won't see any reason not to download the tarball. > Certainly some people think that web apps should be packages. I know > there are plenty of highly useful and popular packages for web apps in > Debian right now. IMP, Gallery, PHPMyAdmin, LDAPExplorer to name a > few. While maybe not as polished as some other packages, they work very > well and provide a valuable service to the Debian community. Of those, I've used the IMP packages regularly, have never gotten around to checking whether the phpmyadmin package was usable for the use I would have had for it, and have found that the gallery package specifically does *not* provide the flexibility I needed for per-user photo galleries. FWIW. > Lastly, in regards to your disdain for a "Streaming protocol on top of > HTTP written in PHP"; Streamline does not make or use a streaming > protocol on top of HTTP. HTTP is the streaming protocol. Most modern > media players, XMMS, Helix, Winamp, etc support streaming media over > HTTP. Technically you are correct streamline is not a "Server". Apache > or whatever web server you are using is the real server. Streaming > merely manages the requests for media and sets up the appropriate http > headers to allow the media to be streamed back to a client in a useful > manner that the web server itself would be unable to do alone. > It's possible that a better description of the role that Streamline > plays in the serving of media could be better worded as to avoid > confusion. However, detailing exactly what the web server is doing and > what the web app is doing doesn't seem like it is appropriate for the > description of the package. Possibly there is a happy medium. I am > glad you brought this particular detail to my attention though since it > had never crossed my mind. Well, as I said, that was my reaction to the phrase. I don't know if others would have the same reaction, but given your clarifications I would suggest something more along the lines of "media[1] library and webcasting service". Cheers, -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer [1] of course, "media library" could also refer to a tape library, so hrm
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