Power users deserve good interfaces, too
So there was an interesting discussion of a command alias function within an SSH client on Slashdot where most of the commenters completely missed the point, and it was an important one. User interface isn’t always based on gorgeous buttons and easy clickability – it must be targeted to the user of that application. In this case, SSH users who manage more than one computer… which is probably almost all SSH users.
Good SSH clients should be definitively targeted at the advanced computer user, and the lack of this feature is an odd decision. Really, the question comes to two schools of thought:
- Always provide the same experience on the same server
- Always provide the same experience to the same client
Implementing #1 is already done via login scripts on most *NIXs, and is trivial because the files and configs are local to the computation. Implementation of #2 does not seem to exist, and we need to ask why. Configurations can be captured locally to the client, and many MUD clients already implement the command alias features requested. Surely one is written in the same language as PuTTY and could be integrated, either as a plug-in or core code.
I question, though, if these ideas are mutually exclusive. Now that software writers are recognizing that people have multiple computers in use, there are sync capabilities all over – for example, in Firefox plugins where you want to have the same web pages open in two places. Why not do it for SSH commands? Push a versioned alias file to a location on the server you’re connecting to, so if you connect using a different client you can pull it down and still use all your commands, aliased as you expect.
Best of both worlds!
Technorati Tags: ssh, user+advocacy