

Jamie Zawinski: Unity of interface - l0stman
http://www-archive.mozilla.org/unity-of-interface.html?

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voidpointer
What I find problematic about this approach is that it leads to an
implementation that represents the least common denominator. Protocols that
have some conceptual overlap were devised for a reason and represent some sort
of evolution. Treating them all the same is, to a certain extent, nullifying
this evolutionary aspect.

FTP, Gopher and HTTP are related in a way where it doesn't hurt too much if a
HTTP client also support Gopher and FTP. However, there are cases where this
doesn't work out so well (E.g. cross platform GUI frameworks).

Consequently, I'd say that it is nice to provide a unified interface for
conceptually related technologies. On the other hand, I'd be really careful
about overplaying this sort of design principle where it may lead to sub-
optimal or overly complex solutions, simply for the sake of supporting more
technologies (who needs Gopher these days?)

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unwind
Any idea how old this is? It mentions Gopher ... Just the fact that it's some
kind of technical writeup by jwz means it has to be a bit dated, right?

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andrewtj
[http://bonsai-www.mozilla.org/cvslog.cgi?file=mozilla-
org/ht...](http://bonsai-www.mozilla.org/cvslog.cgi?file=mozilla-
org/html/unity-of-interface.html&rev=&root=/www/) indicates it dates from '98

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imd
This is why Emacs-lovers love Emacs.

