Re: gnome-about-me

[Alan Cox <alan lxorguk ukuu org uk>]

On Maw, 2004-09-21 at 18:26, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> I'd recommend using a library like libuser (available in Fedora, don't
> know if it's a Red Hat thing or not), which provides an API for querying
> and changing that sort of information.

According to its own docs yes, although its by no means system specific.

> Also dont' forget that Evolution has some (all) of this information, so
> your app could also just be an additional simple front-end to e-d-s.
> Especially if e-d-s already has (or will have) hooks for updating the
> system user information.

Evolution seems to favour Novell Groupwise LDAP formats over pure
RFC2307 formats[1]. One of the things any infrastructure like this is
going to have to do is to support the interpretation of a lot of
different LDAP profiles each designed by one large company or another to
lock customers into their proprietary components.

That's also a great opportunity because nobody really does that well and
interworks in such environments.

Alan
[1] "Its in LDAP" is one part of the problem "Where" and "What is it
called" and "how is it stored" are others. RFC2307 is an experimental
standard to try and unify some of this but doesn't go far enough for the
needs of some programs.