[Goodies-dev] Plugin to configure wireless networks

[James Westby]

Hi all,

Some people have said that they would like a plugin to configure
wireless networks, and the wavelan plugin is probably a reasonable place
for that.

There are a couple of problems with this though. The first is that I
have a desktop and one network, so I don't have any configuration to do.
The second is that I don't even understand the issues involved.

However I am not against having the plugin have this functionality if
it is the best place for it (maybe there should be a separate plugin?).

I had a quick look at what is available. There doesn't seem to be a
leading contender for doing all this though. I could do it myself with a
couple of text boxes and a bunch of ioctls, but that reqiures root
rights, and I'm not sure if just a couple of text boxes is enough for
people.

Network Manager seems to be quite popular now, so I had a quick look at
it. I could link against it, or there is a dbus API, but it is currently
very limited. Also I think it might be easier to add an xfce plugin to
their end of the code.

The other option is for me to provide a way for people to write plugins
for the plugin (not dynamic ones though), so if someone wants their
faviourite method adding they can do it themselves and the user could
choose from them at runtime. Would anyone be interested in adding one of
these plugins if I added the interface? Bearing in mind that I can't
really test or support them too well.

Thanks,

James