Re: [gnome-love] Gnome2 ppp application

[iain <iain prettypeople org>]

søn, 2003-02-23 kl. 23:53 skrev Paul Best:
> I realize that dialup programs aren't of as high a
> priority today as they used to be, but for those of us
> stuck with it, kppp is just a ugly solution.

Back in the days when I had need for a dialup connection 
(3 years ago sadly)
I had a dream.
It was called Mafioso and it was a Bonobo based PPP dialer.

I had a very very rough proof of concept running, but lost it and then
got a broadband connection.

Okay, lovely story. Basically Mafioso was this
There were 2 parts
a) A server
b) one (or more) clients.

An example of its usage will be the best way to describe it
An application that needed to go online (say Evolution) would using
Bonobo start the Mafioso dialer server, which would dial up and inform
the client (Evolution) of when we had been connected. The client could
then go about its buisness. If a second application (say Galeon) needed
to go online, it too would use Bonobo and tell the already running
Mafioso server that it too needed notified when we were online. As we
were online already Galeon would be informed immediatly and go download
pr0n or whatever.

Then when Evolution had finished downloading email it could go offline,
so it would tell the Mafioso server to disconnect, the server would then
disconnect (or could show a dialog asking for confirmation or whatever),
and inform the other listening clients that we were no longer online.
Galeon could then switch to offline mode and so on...
All applications that needed internet access could do this and they
would all know about online/offline status and everything would be
sweet.

Like I said, I ran out of steam after getting a broadband connection,
but the Proof of Concept was basically a forked version of wvdial that I
made into a shared library (libwvdial.so), and then a bonobo server that
used that library to do the dialup stuff. WVdial was good because it was
completely fool proof 99% of the time: Give a phone number, a username
and password and it could work everything else out. 

The main problem I had was getting wvdial to
a) compile into a shared library, the Makefiles were well weird.
b) Wrap the C++ code of wvdial into a C shared library
c) Stop leaking like a seive.

The other advantages I could see with WVDial was that you could have
used its code to write a PPP setup utility, it could detect modems, set
up multiple accounts...

So, yeah, I don't know about current gnome PPP dialers, but that was my
dream for a wonder dialer application, in case anyone wants to write
one, maybe they can aim for it (if others think its a good dream.)

iain
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