GNOME and PPP - suggestions for way forward

[James Green <gnome cyberstorm demon co uk>]

Dear all,

I've been playing around with the ppp and modem progs that come with
gnome. I want to quickly congratulate those who did gnome-ppp - it worked
first time, unlike other scripts and setup-tools that give failure notices
from those in #linuxhelp.

Now, it seems bizarre to have THREE (count 'em) apps/utils to perform
modem/ppp operations. Could we not get rid of modem_lights and PPP-Applet
and just expand gnome-ppp (it works, why break it?)?

I propose (and I have no idea what's in CVS, i'm using the latest
stable tarballs):

- Gnome-PPP should be like the DUN in Windows95 in that it is available
  both as an application and as a menu-driven system from the panel.

- Get rid of modem_lights and PPP Applet

- in Gnome-PPP have an option to display an applet icon with Rx/Tx modem
  lights (damned useful for those unfortunate souls with internal modems)

- when menu-clicked have a Connect To:-> submenu listing all known
  possible connections (I have at least four different telephone numbers
  to my ISP so if one fails...)

- When 2x Selected (double-clicked) it connects to the default connection,
  else cancels if attempting to connect/dialing/negotiating, else
  disconnects

- on Menu-click has a menu option to open a window full of statistics such
  as:

  * Time connection began
  * Time last connection closed
  * Current time on-line
  * Last known connect speed (e.g. 52k)
  * Total number of bytes received/transmitted
  * Status, PID and Device (as per current gnome-ppp)
  * Current negotiated speed (is this possible?)
  * Highest speed (normally the initial connect speed by may differ)
  * Local ip address
  * Remote (NAS) ip address
  * ip address(es) of the DNS server(s)

- When attempting to connect, it does a little animation (panel)

- Connect/Disconnect/Cancel Menu entries.


I would do this lot myself, but am only now going through the gtk
tutorial, so it'll be a while before I start developing anything (I have
got something in mind for *all* you web-developers out there, more soon).

Comments, suggestions?


-- 
James Green
http://www.cyberstorm.demon.co.uk/
Home of the demon.tech.modems 56k FAQ.