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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Daemon for managing dialup internetconnections
From:       Waldo Bastian <bastian () ens ! ascom ! ch>
Date:       1999-06-25 10:01:46
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"Bjoern.Kahl" wrote:
> 
> On 25-Jun-99 Simon Hausmann wrote:
> > On Thu, 24 Jun 1999, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> >
> >>  - The hard one: we need not only shared IDL, but a common way to
> >>    obtain a server implementing the given interface, and a way
> >>    for users to configure which server will be used. In Gnome,
> >>    we have a 'libgnorba' library that does this. But it's
> >>    Gnome-specific.
> >
> > Yes, and comparable to libgnorba we have the KDE daemon and
> > libkded, also KDE specific.
> 
>  [ ... ]
> 
>  I am sorry, but I canīt follow you.
>  I donīt know what "IDL", "ORB", "CORBA" or a "Namig Service" is.

Short CORBA intro: 
* CORBA: a buzzword for connecting different application together.
* IDL: Interface description language. Portable description of
  an interface.
* ORB: Object Request Broker. Translates requests made via a native
interface (E.g. in C or C++) to the IDL interface and back.
* Naming Service: A CORBA thingy that you can use to find the 
application you want to talk to.

>  What I wrote is supposed to be a generall, systemwide
>  connecting-service. using X-Based thing will kill one of its
>  design-goals: prevent timebased connecting and disconnecting 
>  from interrupting hand-made connectings:

Yes. The question is indeed whether CORBA will be very usefull 
here.

I can think of a setup like:

PPP-dialer
    ^
    |(3)
    v
+--------+   (1)   
| NetMgr | <----> Non-X applications
+--------+
    ^
    |(1)
    v
+--------+   (2)
|  CORBA | <----> KDE/GNOME applications
| Service|
+--------+

Where (1) Is more or less the current NetMgr interface,
(2) is an IDL interface and
(3) is a way to fire up a connection

In a more desktop centric approach you could go for:

+--------+   (1)   
| NetMgr | <----> Non-X applications
|        |
|  CORBA |   (2)
| Service| <----> KDE/GNOME applications
|        |
|        | <----> PPP-dialer
+--------+   (3)
    
With of course the restriction that you can't dial out if
you don't have the desktop up and running.

If we have (1) and (2) standardized, everyhting is defined
for the applications.

The rest what we need is a way to specify what to use for
(3). E.g. whether to use ppp-on or kppp or something else.

Cheers,
Waldo

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