A quick idea

[Stephan Arts]

On 9/12/06, Jasper Huijsmans <jasper at xfce.org> wrote:
> 2006/9/12, Erik Harrison <erikharrison at gmail.com>:
> > The Xfce settings manager is occasionally praised for its UI. It's
> > nice and simple, and much more manageable than a long list of possible
> > settings, or a complex tree sidepane and main panel.
> >
> > Unfortunately it's not a complete tool - it only manages settings for
> > the "desktop". That means Xfce and any apps for which we've written a
> > wrapper plugin. The remaining Settings tools show up in the single
> > biggest submenu on my system.
> >
> > I propose, for 4.5/4.6 eliminating the settings menu by default in the
> > desktop menu, and replacing xfce-settings-show with an app that, just
> > like the menu does, shows an aggregate of all the appropriate .desktop
> > files, organized by subcategory.
> >
> > I think this would improve the usability of the desktop, while at the
> > same time simplifying how we add buttons to the tool - no need to
> > write wrapper plugins anymore, just ship with a .desktop file. It also
> > makes it MUCH easier for downstream to add buttons to the tool. I know
> > at least HP added a number of mcs wrapper plugins for it's Xfce based
> > thin client.
> >
> > Thoughts?
>
> I think it is indeed important (after 4.4) to evaluate and reorganize
> our platform. This includes bringing in libexo and maybe combining
> some libraries, but certainly also settings management.
>
> I'd like to see the settings manager be non-gui only and allowing
> external programs to get and set values. Then it would be easy to have
> external utilities, with desktop files, to allow the user to change
> the settings. It would even make it possible to have alternative user
> interfaces. Yeah, much like gconf. In fact, I think we should
> seriously consider using gconf or at least making it easy to do so at
> a later time when they get rid of the corba dependency.

I was wondering, where do you stand in regards to OPC?
OPC is widely used in the Industrial Automation bussiness, there is an
OPC XML-DA spec (based on SOAP) which is used for setting/reading data
from PLC's and other embedded devices. The design of OPC is abstract
enough to use it in a configuration utility for Xfce.

Another effect of this will be that ppl can actually administer their
network through SCADA applications.

On a side node, it has never been done before on a *nix system, and
therefore would be revolutionary. I have no idea about the legal
issues regarding the use of OPC except that it is an open standard,
maintained by the opc foundation[1].

If you think it something worth looking into, i can contact the
OPC-foundation for more information regarding legal issues, patents
etc...

If not, forget i mentioned it ;)

[1] http://www.opcfoundation.org


> Just some very random thoughts from me...
>
>         Jasper

And these where mine...

Stephan