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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: System Configure tool
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       2001-05-05 18:35:49
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David Faure wrote:
> 
> On Saturday 05 May 2001 16:23, Rob Kaper wrote:
> > On Sat, May 05, 2001 at 01:17:56AM +0200, Matthias Elter wrote:
> > > > Sign me up for Slackware.
> > > >
> > > > KPP maintains a world-wide database of telecom providers and their rates
> > > > *and* ISPs and their dail-in settings for crying out loud. If we can
> > > > maintain that, can't we take care of those few different setups?
> > >
> > > Those few different setups? Don't kid yourself.
> >
> > Okay, maybe I shouldn't have added that sarcasm. But I still think that if
> > we can maintain all the KPP stuff, we can also find the people willing to
> > write distribution specific stuff.
> 
> This is nonsense, sorry.
> 1 - ask Harri: maintaining this kppp stuff is a nightmare, and he keeps
> trying to find a solution for not having to do all this by himself.
> There was the idea of a webpage where people could upload and download
> that stuff, but that takes quite some work to setup. Waiting for that,
> he keeps receiving submissions from people everywhere (the number of
> "supported" ISPs in kppp is **far** from the real number of different
> ISPs in the world !), and has to incorporate them by hand into the CVS,
> which takes time, and is a really boring job.
> 2 - ISPs and system configuration are two quite different things.
> 
> I wish there was a way for KDE to configure the system. But for me
> the best way to do that would be to help distributors / unixes
> unify the system configuration in the first place.


Hi,

Not to repeat myself, but -- there are a fair number of configuration
things that require the same information regardless of distribution. 
The point of a GUI is to get information from the user; the point of a
UI is not to configure the system.  Some other program can update the
system.  KDE can provide the GUI and dump the information in a way a
distribution can make use of it easily (e.g., calling a program with
specific environment variables set, or command-line arguments,
reflecting the values chosen by the user).

A perfect, and important, candidate for this is network configuration,
as the information is the same for all systems and it is a critical
system component that cannot be fixed other than through telephone
support (with other things perhaps the tech support person can get
screen shots or so of the problem system, but if there is no network
card working there just is no way to provide tech support).

If KDE has system configuration modules there may very well be some
distros that don't support it and have their own way of doing things. 
But in the long run if the KDE config frontends are nice and users like
them distros will adopt them as well.  And by using something like
environment variables to pass configuration values it makes it very easy
for each distro to update their system config files.

So it would not be KDE's job to actually change config settings; but
rather provide a document explaining what program/script/whatever gets
called with what variables when a configuration change is made (and
maybe specify what the possible return codes are so error messages can
be translated using the KDE translation mechanism).  The distros'
responsibility is to write a script to convert these values into system
settings, which is IMHO easier for the distro than having to maintain a
whole set of GUI configuration modules which also have to be updated
when there are system changes.  Moreover, once these scripts are in
place and the API known, other desktops (AfterStep/GNOME/etc.) can make
use of them too, providing even more uniformity in how systems are
maintained.

Hopefully the distributions can get involved in this process.  In fact I
would like to involve the distros in a discussion of what makes sense to
do in a "common" way and what does not.

The alternative is rather bleak.  I don't see how KDE can ever reach a
wide audience if basic things like configuring a network card vary
widely from computer to computer (some use a KDE configuration module,
others don't, and even configuration modules appear in different
submenus and have different layouts, etc.), even with the same version
of KDE installed.  ("Yes, tech support, I have KDE 2.3, how do I
configure my network card?"  "Hi, yes, well please tell me which
distribution you use and which version of that distribution and which
desktop/window manager and let me see if I can find it, which most
likely won't be the case" :-/).  This is a good point in time to start
setting a UI standard for this type of configuration; best of all would
be if the GNOME project could also agree to use the same UI (the buttons
will look a bit different but the layout of the dialogs could be the
same).

UI's are to desktops what APIs are to servers/workstations.  Unix
essentially "failed" b/c the APIs became splintered.  IMHO if Linux
desktop splinters in the UI it will suffer the same fate -- no standards
means no acceptance (particularly when there are viable desktops that do
have standards and hence that are "supportable").  UIs are even more
subject to failure due to non-standardization than are APIs.

Ciao,

Dre

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