Re: GNOME Usability Improvements - Fix the window manager!

["James M. Cape" <jcape jcinteractive com>]

Scott Haug wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 5 Aug 1999 02:54:06 Ronald de Man <deman@win.tue.nl> writes
> >There's a Gnome Workshop project (with no less than 3 word processor
> >attempts, which I think is a bit unfortunate).
> 
> A terrible shame, I agree.
> 
> >
> >
> >It can and should be easier to set up. I haven't looked at gnome-ppp
> >for a while, but last time I checked it was not possible to do the
> >whole setup from within gnome-ppp. Nowadays with most ISPs you only
> >need three bits of information: phone number, login name, password.
> >All other data is pretty standard. Gnome-ppp should at least be able
> >to ask for these three, and set things up accordingly. (Okay, I guess
> >it should also be told where to find the modem device.)
> >However, the user guide says:
> >
> >---
> >Although gnome-ppp attempts to make configuring a PPP connection as easy as
> >possible, there are still
> >several files that need to be edited as superuser (root) for gnome-ppp to
> >work properly. gnome-ppp itself is
> >not a set-user-id program, nor does it have any helper programs that pose
> >any security risk. gnome-ppp
> >uses the permissions of the /usr/sbin/pppd program, which the user of
> >gnome-ppp must have permission to
> >execute.
> >---
> >
> >So the novice user reboots to windows.
> >
> 
> I've found that the program wvdial does a lot of this setup for me, and is
> hands-down the easiest dial-up app I've found for linux.  It has allowed me
> to bypass gnome-ppp altogether.  It handles modem detection, it determines
> the correct init strings, it has a heuristic approach for determining how to
> log in with ppp.  Setup is ridiculously simple (so much so, I don't remember
> now exactly what I needed to do to get it running, but it took less than a
> minute).  The only thing it didn't do that Windows could was determine my
> DNS dynamically.  I now use wvdial with modem-lights on the panel to dial
> in.  Under properties:
> 
> Connect command: wvdial &
> Disconnect command: killall wvdial
> 
> If my isp, modem, or supernatural powers kick me off for whatever reason,
> wvdial automatically dials back in again.  Its pretty nice.  Now, if it can
> work that easily by piecing it together with an unrelated gnome applet,
> surely it can't be *that* hard to make a gnome-specific app that is even
> more seemless.  I'd volunteer, but it's not one of my itches at the moment,
> and I've got plenty others that need scratching.  I think someone has
> written a KDE version of it cleverly called kwvdial.  I don't know how well
> it works, since I don't use kde, but I'm sure using wvdial to write gwvdial
> (or, please God, something with a better name) would make this experience
> much more pleasant for everyone.
> 
> BTW, wvdial can be found on freshmeat.net, I believe.
> 
> >
> >I think some autodetection is possible. And it should be allowed
> >to take floppies out whenever there is no disk activity (I think
> >that's possible when you set nosync in /etc/fstab, but I haven't
> >tried it yet).
> >
> >It would also be nice if gmc windows (including the desktop) would
> >automatically detect directory changes (so that icons appear whenever
> >a new file is created, etc.).
> 
> Someone mentioned using autofs to do this.  I don't know much, if anything,
> about autofs, but the other poster (I believe it was Mr. Cape) mentioned
> about it being difficult to setup.  Would autofs allow for autodetection of
> floppies, cd-roms, etc., and how hard would it be to write an app to make it
> easier to use (such as what wvdial does for dial-up connections...)?
> 
> Thanks for your time,
> 
> -Scott

With autofs, you make a "whatever" directory, then edit an
"auto.whatever" file in /etc to contain entries which correspond to the
mount points you want. You then reference this "auto.whatever" file in
"/etc/auto.master". You then fire up autofs, which parses the
auto.master file, and then waits for accesses to /whatever/mountpoint
(ex: /mnt/local/cdrom). When a process tries to open the directory which
corresponds to a mountpoint, the mountpoint is automatically mounted,
and the contents "written" to the directory in quesiton. The mount
points are unmounted a short time later (5 minutes by default).

Once configured, autofs operates *exactly* like Windows/Mac. When a
process tries to access a directory which corresponds to a mountpoint
somewhere on the filesystem, the mountpoint is automatically mounted and
displayed seamlessly.

Why distros don't configure autofs during installation is beyond me.

Either way, a GNOMEified UI to configure this would be *very* cool. This
(merged with a manual mount/fstab editor, and bundled with a
configurators for most of the typical system tools and daemons [like
printers, Samba, networking, NFS, etc.]) needs to be part of some kind
of "GNOME System Administrator" package, similar to (and perhaps sharing
the capplet code with) the Control Center.

    Jim Cape
    http://www.jcinteractive.com

    "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them
     pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
        -- Winston Churchill