2014-05-12 There are so many websites I visit regularily, just to get a specific piece of information. One example is the Duden (the of- ficial reference for the German language). I don't care for the graphic layout, I don't care for further functions on the page, I just want to know if a word is known and correctly spelled, and possible its meaning. Searching the web for ``duden someword'' just doesn't seem to be right. Opening http://duden.de and writ- ing the word into the search box, would be the correct webish way, but is it necessary? Adding a custom search plugin for the Duden into the browser, would be a good approach ... But, why do I care so less about making the web more comfortable for me? Pos- sibly because I just don't like the modern web. Instead, I wrote a small shell script, containing one line: w3m "http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/$1" The result is pure text, no irritations ... well, not exactly, because the content is still more than the real payload. If the Duden would provide its true content as JSON or XML (in those modern times), then I could do the presentation myself. Then I could omit all the management information (navigation and stuff) but only display the true payload information. Yes, that's how it should be ... at least in the modern (web) world. In my world, it would rather be an exported filesystem that I can mount, or some- thing like that. Plan9 has approaches for such things. (But this egoistic and capitalistic web world doesn't care for tools and real help; it just cares about doing business.) It's a failure of computing, that the three main aspects of pro- grams -- data storage, the logic, and the presentation -- are usually merged: How much more powerful would our computing world be with them strictly separated! This is the reason why the MCV (Model--Controller--View) pattern is so important. However, not only should code areas in the same project be splitted, but rath- er should these aspects be covered by different projects, where each one is exchangable. As a prerequisite, data and computing must be free. As long as data and code is hidden, owned and de- fended, the software landscape will remain a strategic battle ground to support various other interests but not the best sup- port for human beings. http://marmaro.de/lue/ markus schnalke