From: marcov@stack.nl   
      
   On 2004-09-27, Glenn Someone    
   wrote:   
   > I was going to make a lot of the same points LD Blake made, but they   
   > were made, so I'll go on and just guess that you haven't been involved   
   > in technical support (hardware or software) in any way in your life   
   > have you?   
      
   I've been sysadmin on an university for 2 years, and also spent 2 years on the   
   Chello (UPC) helldesk. (an ISP). Currently I'm developing a tailor made   
   business tracking program with a helpdesk module.   
      
   > It's not wise to trust the user with critical settings to make your   
   > program work.  In fact, it'd scare me to death to release a program   
   > that trusts the user will do certain things to make it function   
   > properly.   
      
   Depends on your market. I assumed it was used inside a company, probably by   
   somewhat knowledgable users, since most converted BP legacy applications are   
   too bad UI wise for end users anyway.   
      
   Keep in mind that users don't edit .ini files and shortcut commandlines.   
   Sysadmins do that, and they know the config of their machines, and can pick   
   a decent value. Even if done by trial and error.   
      
   However if your program automatic behaviour trips on some configuration,   
   even the system administrator can't do anything, let alone the user. So   
   always, _ALWAYS_ provide a manual override possibility that kills the   
   automatic behaviour. My sysadmin and BBS years taught me that.   
      
   > In fact, the best path for programming is to assume that if someone   
   > can do something with your program, no matter how insane and stupid   
   > you may think it might be, they will.  The wise path is to always   
   > prevent the user from doing those things.   
      
   Too simplistic. In practice, your "wise" path will always fail in some   
   situation you hadn't accounted for, and the user (or their sysadmin) will   
   stand there empty handed, since they have no way to influence the programs   
   behaviour.   
      
   ... and keep in mind that you can always have the automatic detection as   
   default, without param or config file.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)