Re: [Gnome-admin-tools] [Nautilus-list] Re: Gnome-admin-tools digest, Vol 1 #7 - 17 msgs

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel helixcode com>]

> Using XML (as opposed to a set of custom CORBA interfaces, say) gives us
> a lot of flexibility:

The reason we are not using CORBA now is that we want to get these
tools quickly into production and use.   Also, designing the CORBA
interfaces ahead of time --ie, without knowing what the full scope of
each tool will be-- iis going to lead to a lot of revisions.

In the future, we will support CORBA in the backends as well, but it
is not a requirement for the first pass.  The first pass is: get this
to people and get people productive *SOON*.

CORBA support in the long run is very important, as this will be the
first time Unix can be configured with a consisten interface.  Instead
of having hundreds of different file formats and different contents
and ways of notifying the system of changes, we will have a single
mechanism: CORBA defined interfaces.  Different interfaces will be
implemented for different services, but this is basically an extended
"API" that the programmer has access to manage the system rather than
having to implement parsers and talking to a collection of
disconnected tools. 

The vision --shared with the rest of GNOME-- is to be able to do this
from your favorite scripting language:

	$user_admin = GNOME::activate_service ("System::UserAdmin:1.0");
	$account = $user_admin->new_account ("miguel");
	$account->set_name ("Miguel de Icaza");
	$account->set_expiration ("2 months");
	$account->add_group ("students");
	$account->set_password_policy ("xxx"):

> us (suitware) -- user administration, NFS and Samba mounts/exports, and
> printer configuration (including Samba printing).

Printer configuration is one area in which we need to talk about, as
this needs to integrate with the GNOME printing architecture. 

Best wishes,
Miguel.