[tahoe-dev] barriers to using tahoe

[Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn]

Dear Jody:

Thank you very much for the report from the field! It is useful to  
get overall gestalt reports in order to track our progress and to set  
expectations for other users. Hearing reports like this from actual  
users who have actual expericen is invaluable.

In addition, you could contribute even more value by adding details  
which are specific enough that we could see how to fix them, i.e. new  
issue tickets. I'll quote some of your message and ask for more  
specifics.

On Monday, 2010-02-01, at 9:58 , Jody Harris wrote:

>  - It's hard to get it up and running

But the people you cite did get it up and running but subsequently  
stopped using it, right? Was it perhaps sort of left-over resentment  
from the getting started part that contributed to them giving up? (I  
know I'm that way about software -- if it is hard to install then I  
feel like it owes me one and it has to make up for it once I get it  
installed. :-)) Or was it just that they didn't find it sufficiently  
useful?

>  - Creating directories and files via the WUI makes keeping track  
> of capabilities a tedious manual exercise in futility.

Did they use bookmarks? I find bookmarks (in my web browsers, I mean)  
to be pretty easy. What could we change to reduce this problem?

>  - Using the CLI is arcane, mysterious and cryptic.

If you can provide some more specifics, now would probably be a good  
time to do so, as David-Sarah has assigned a bunch of usability  
tickets to themselves including CLI tickets: http://allmydata.org/ 
trac/tahoe/query?status=%21closed&owner=davidsarah

>  - There should be a FUSE-like gateway through my file manager

I heartily agree! Volunteers needed! Here are the related tickets:

http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/query?status=% 
21closed&order=priority&keywords=%7Efuse

François and David-Sarah have both contribued small patches to the  
FUSE code recently. If any readers want to jump in and make a proper  
read-write FUSE plugin, feel free to post to this list about it.

There are at least a couple of other strategies that might have even  
better results than a FUSE plugin for you. What file manager do you  
use? Perhaps Tahoe-LAFS could be integrated directly into that  
filemanager. Or perhaps the existing read-write ftp plugin would  
satisfy.

>  - Once I create items, I have no way to browser them (see above)

Hrm, because you don't have a sufficiently convenient way to keep  
track of the caps to them, you mean? What if you were to keep a  
bookmark to a certain directory and link everything you create into  
that directory (or into subdirectory which are linked into that  
directory, etc.). Would that satisfy? That's what I've been doing,  
e.g.: http://testgrid.allmydata.org:3567/uri/URI%3ADIR2-RO% 
3Au6hxf6v5mu6viibkppkpd7ygu4% 
3Am54njuevyfxpma4dzklipej3g4kh24l2tgt6l52foaqwzdhzsw3a/

>  - I don't have time to read manuals
>  - I only have [15 minutes a week] to work on this project

Yeah, too little time. I have this problem too! ;-)

Regards,

Zooko