Regarding possible inclusion of gnome-isp-dialer

[Zoran Rilak <bruce tesla rcub bg ac yu>]

Greetings,

my name is Zoran Rilak.  I'm a student at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences in Belgrade.  I have some questions about the possible inclusion of my project into the GNOME Desktop Environment.  First off, I hope this list is the right place to start; if not, please be so kind and redirect me to the proper mailing list.

	I've worked for some time on an application called gppp which was heavily based (more like a GTK+ clone than anything else) on kppp; a GTK+-based user-interface for Point-to-Point Protocol Daemon (pppd).

	The need for such a component inside GNOME is fairly obvious to all of us who don't have any means of permanent connection to the Internet.  Be it old dial-up via telephone lines or PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE), GNOME user must look for alternate solutions to connect (in fact, most people in Serbia I've inquired about this say they prefer KDE over GNOME primarily because GNOME has no counterpart to kppp).  

	Lately I've dropped work on gppp and started aiming towards complete GNOME compliance.  The project is still far from being completed but I can state some of its goals:

>     - descriptive, non-cryptic name: gnome-isp-dialer
>     - simple user interface: main window has only four toplevel widgets:
> >         - main menu bar ("Connection", "Edit", "Help")
> >         - ISP selection combobox
> >         - Authorisation expander
> > >             - username entry
> > >             - password entry
> > >         
> >         - "Connect"/"Disconnect" context-sensitive button
> >     
>     - notification area icon
>     - using Network Monitor applet to display the throughput (no need to write anoter one)
>     - non-graphical suid component in charge of writing temporary pppd configuration files and invoking pppd
>     - registering as a server able to connect to the ISP on demand (browser requesting an URL while offline)

The list of ISP's is maintained via a separate application, gnome-isp-list, which will provide:
>     - importing and exporting ISP settings (these do NOT include username/password pair) from/to a file
>     - notebook layout of ISP parameters' widgets, grouped by their importance to the user, not to the daemon
>     - sensible default values which "work" for most ISPs
>     - launcher will be installed to Desktop Preferences, under Advanced; gnome-isp-list can also be run from gnome-isp-dialer | Edit | ISP List...

    I was wondering what was the general idea about the need for such an application in GNOME.  

Oh, and yes, being in an early stage of development, gnome-isp-dialer still doesn't have a webpage, but I'm working on it. 

Best regards,
Zoran