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  <div class="section_header">Why Text Files are a Good Idea</div>
  <p>
    One of the initial design requirements of TaskForest was that it be
    easily configuriable with just a shell prompt and your favorite text
    editor.  Many of the servers I administer are old boxes which I
    administer by logging into them via <code>ssh</code>.  So when it came
    to designing job dependencies in Family files, I chose a text file
    representation.  The benefits of text files over a graphical user
    interface for this are many:
  </p>

  <ul class=bullet>
    <li><b>Easy Remote Access - </b>All you need is the ability to get to a
        command line and a text editor on the machine that
        runs <code>taskforest</code>.  With the such low client access
        requirements, virtually any old machine that has internet access
        and an <code>ssh</code> client can be used to administer the
        system.  I have often worked on our <code>taskforestd</code>
        server from a local internet cafe using a Putty.exe downloaded
        minutes earlier.
    </li>

    <li><b>Mobile Access - </b>Text files also make work relatively easy using a
        mobile ssh client like Idokorro Mobile SSH.  A dedicated mobile
        client would be ideal, but short of that, the text file approach
        assures low bandwidth usage and easy-to-make changes.
    </li>
      
    <li><b>Flexibility - </b>The simple, easily parseable format of text
        files allows us to build richer clients later that would use a
        graphical interface to specify relationships between jobs.
    </li>

    <li><b>Source Control - </b>The text based format makes it easy to
        place the Family files under source control.  You can also
        easily <code>diff</code> different versions of the same family
        file.
    </li>

    <li><b>Grep - </b>When you have dozens of family files and hundreds of
        jobs, you may need to answer questions like: "Are we still running
        Job J1?  It needs to be decommissioned."  This can easily be
        answered by <code>grep</code>ping the Family files for job J1.
    </li>

  </ol>



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