Re: Merging "Proxy" and "Network" applets

[Carlos Garnacho <carlosg gnome org>]

On Thu, 2006-10-05 at 12:26 +0100, Calum Benson wrote:
> On 8 Sep 2006, at 12:12, Pierre Mazoyer wrote:
> >
> > The approach you describe is the one used by Mac OS X.
> > The administrator can define "locations" for which he enables and  
> > sets up the interfaces he wants. Interfaces can be sorted by  
> > "priority" (indicating the default route). The administrator can  
> > configure as well proxies per interface. Some network settings are  
> > only available to administrators, but some other settings are  
> > customizable by normal users (a "lock" icon on the Network control  
> > panel permits authenticating as an administrator).
> > Any normal user can then select a location in the Apple > Network  
> > settings submenu and Mac OS X automatically manages and configures  
> > interfaces when they become available (switching from one to the  
> > other using the priority setting).
> >
> > I believe this is an powerful and user-friendly approach.
> 
> It's not nearly as powerful and useful as the location stuff was in  
> MacOS pre-X, however, where you could set preferences for all sorts  
> of applications (e.g. default mail account) and system-level stuff  
> (e.g. default printer) based on your Location.  That's where I'd  
> really like to see GNOME heading with its notion of Locations, rather  
> than just tying it into network settings.

I think it's matter of making each concerned app locations-aware to get
to a common locations management, for example g-s-t's network-admin
already has cut&paste-ready code to deal with its user-defined profiles:

http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gnome-system-tools/src/network/network-locations.c
http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gnome-system-tools/src/network/network-locations.h

such code could be embedded in any location manager to deal with network
configuration changes.

	Regards

> 
> Cheeri,
> Calum.
>