Re: [MacPerl] Installing on Users' Macs

[Matthew Langford <langfml [at] eng [dot] auburn [dot] edu>]

On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, Chris Nandor wrote:
> At 23.47 -0500 1998.12.02, Matthew Langford wrote:
> >I'm uncomfortable with making the whole MacPerl folder invisible.  I
> >really don't even like locking, actually.  Locking is mostly ineffective
> >(only an option key away from a silent delete), and annoying.
> 
> Most people do not know this.

Yes, but people willing to delete things in the System Folder quickly
learn it.

> >Invisible
> >smacks of being Big Brotherly protective--I don't want you to mess up this
> >large folder of stuff I need, so I'll hide it from you.
> 
> Exactly.  That is the point.  That is what some people want.  They want to
> protect their stupid users from doing somethinig stupid.  It is Big
> Brotherly, it is Microsoftish, and in some cases, it may be the right thing
> to do.
> 
> Certainly, I would not do that to my computers, or to the computers of
> people who can follow through with a simple instruction like "don't move or
> delete this folder or its contents".  But some people cannot deal with
> that, and you protect them from themselves, if you are in a position to do
> so.

I agree there are situations where special precautions must be made.
(Often I've noticed, though, that where users are protected from
themselves, an ever-increasing effort must be made.  Sometimes it is
better to teach them, and/or let them get burned and then teach them.  It
becomes rather like keeping your children permanently out of the kitchen
for fear they will touch the eye of the stove.  But that is veering way
off-topic...)

But Big Brotherisms like invisibility of a large folder is not the Right
Thing, at least for the product developer, unless you know that a script
is not meant for wide distribution, but only for this Hostile Environment. 

For wide distribution, overprotection is presumptuous, annoying, bad
policy, and worse.  Even Microsoft knows better.

Typically, Hostile Environments use other protective measures, such as the
previously mentioned locked System Folder, At Ease or similar
Dumbifier/Protect-The-Innocents, network disk image refreshing, and so on.
They should suffice for most circumstances.

If we are talking about an installation issues for general MacPerl
scripts, in my opinion, invisibility is a poor option.  Again, I don't
mind an invisible file, but making a large folder invisible is very, very
bad.

> >The System folder is a universal location for Don't-Mess-With-This things,
> >I agree.  So I suppose this is the place for the core and modules (but not
> >necessarily docs/PODs or other non-executable peripherals).  Java VMs, for
> >example, often make their way to the System folder.  Probably the
> >Extension folder, or a special Perl folder, would be appropriate.
> 
> Maybe.

For cases where this isn't true (public labs, for example), other measures
are typically taken (independent of the developer).  If you need to make a
more paranoid installation, make it only in the special cases where you
_know_ it is needed.  Protectionism, in the general case, may be much more
harmful than isolated, reasonable script failure. 


--
MattLangford 


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