Re: GNOME Usability Improvements - Fix the window manager!

["Michael K. Johnson" <johnsonm redhat com>]

Scott Haug wrote:
> I've found that the program wvdial does a lot of this setup for me, and is
> hands-down the easiest dial-up app I've found for linux.

I second the motion...  wvdial is a highly-impressive piece of software.

> It has allowed me
> to bypass gnome-ppp altogether.  It handles modem detection, it determines
> the correct init strings, it has a heuristic approach for determining how to
> log in with ppp.  Setup is ridiculously simple (so much so, I don't remember
> now exactly what I needed to do to get it running, but it took less than a
> minute).  The only thing it didn't do that Windows could was determine my
> DNS dynamically.

The next version of pppd will be able to do that, with the "usepeerdns"
option.  wvdial can't do that for you.  It is done using a Microsoft
"standard" extension to IPCP, which protocol is managed from within
pppd.

> I now use wvdial with modem-lights on the panel to dial
> in.  Under properties:
> 
> Connect command: wvdial &
> Disconnect command: killall wvdial
> 
> If my isp, modem, or supernatural powers kick me off for whatever reason,
> wvdial automatically dials back in again.  Its pretty nice.  Now, if it can
> work that easily by piecing it together with an unrelated gnome applet,
> surely it can't be *that* hard to make a gnome-specific app that is even
> more seemless.  I'd volunteer, but it's not one of my itches at the moment,
> and I've got plenty others that need scratching.  I think someone has
> written a KDE version of it cleverly called kwvdial.  I don't know how well
> it works, since I don't use kde, but I'm sure using wvdial to write gwvdial
> (or, please God, something with a better name) would make this experience
> much more pleasant for everyone.

OK, I didn't announce this before because I have no schedule for completion,
but I'm working on a "gwvdial" (I haven't named it yet, any suggestions please
send to me personally).  I figured anyone who was going to work on it would
contact the wvdial authors and learn from them to talk to me before writing
too much code.  I also didn't announce it because I'm still thinking about
how some pieces are going to work, and because I haven't written a line of
code of it yet.  (I've been working on groundwork in wvdial itself and in
pppd, instead.)

*However*, my gwvdial is going to be written to assume the Red Hat Linux
standard networking setup, using wvdial in place of chat, and is only
going to show wvdial configuration sections that it knows apply to
ifcfg files.

This may well mean that someone else will want to do a generic "gwvdial"
with a different interface.  If someone else decides to do this, please
contact me, as we will want to share significant chunks of code, such
as the WvLog subclass that displays the modem interaction.  It may be
possible to work out a unified interface that looks similar on Red Hat
Linux and derived systems to how it looks on other systems, but my goal
is extreme ease of use within our established framework, so I'm going
to simply ignore some wvdial options -- "new pppd", for example, I can
simply assume on a Red Hat Linux system.  There are lots of other
examples where I can make a simpler user interface by making these
assumptions, and someone writing a more general client might strongly
disagree with me on which options to present and who the target user
is and how to design the interface...

I've tried out kwvdial, and while reading its code can help you figure
out how to interface with the wvdial classes, I wouldn't call it's
interface brilliant.  It's a good first try, IMHO, and gwvdial (or
whatever good name someone comes up with...) should be able to improve
on it markedly.

michaelkjohnson

"Magazines all too frequently lead to books and should be regarded by the
 prudent as the heavy petting of literature."            -- Fran Lebowitz
 Linux Application Development     http://people.redhat.com/johnsonm/lad/