"Network Indifference" in the Free Unixes? 7
PapaZit asks: "Laptop and home users don't alway have access to a network. There are many tasks that can be done off-line, but require an occasional network connection (reading and responding to email, for example). In the Free Unix front, there has been some work in
this direction, but it hasn't made it anywhere outside of
Windows. Coda has made it possible
for me to work with centralized files offline, and I have some ugly
scripts involving perl, fetchmail, and procmail that handle email, but I wouldn't inflict them on others. An OS with automated "Network
indifference" seems like it would be useful to both novice users and
power users, and it's the sort of thing that could make these
alternative operating systems more appealing to the masses. Are there any efforts in this direction that could use support or testers? Are people waiting until networking becomes so ubiquitous
that the problem goes away?"
Pardon? (Score:2)
MacOS has had a similar feature for years now, though it's a bit less slick.
As for other applications, last I checked, most mail programs, even low-end ones like Outlook Express and Netscape supported offline composition and reading, with message delivery on reconnect, and have for years. Internet Explorer's ability to pull down web pages and sites for offline browsing has been in since 4.0 and also keeps getting better, with automated background fetching and notification.
These sort of features could certainly stand to get better and easier to use; many people--yourself included, it seems--don't even know they exist, which certainly points up poor interface design and probably also bad documentation. But the funcionality is there.
Lotus in particular is good at these things. Not happy simply with Notes, the mother of all offline-sync application environments, they and IBM have now got interesting little personal web proxies and containers you can install that allow you to replicate working web-based applications, so that forms can be validated and local copies of databases can be updated with full logic offline through a browser interface.
Or are you asking about something else?
Local server? (Score:2)
They'd hit the net when it was available to transfer data, and silently fail (and return cached data, for the proxy server) when you weren't connected. You'd just be talking to the local daemons, so as far as your mail client and web browser can tell, you'd always be connected.
Yes, this will eat system resources, but it shouldn't be that much if you've configured the system properly.
Good idea (Score:2)
---
Re:Pardon? (Score:2)
Man, I swear that people figure every Ask Slashdot like this is trolling for windows biggots. He's on your side this time
Knowing When Network Changes (Score:2)
As others have pointed out, proxies and configuration adjustments can deal with other network changes. For example, have your applications configured to send outgoing mail to a port on "localhost", then redirect where spooled mail gets sent to based upon the network config.
Bloated Notes (OT) (Score:1)
Is anyone happy with Bloated Notes? Having to use it is definitely the worst part of contracting at IBM.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
UUCP (Score:1)
Maybe it'd suit your needs.