nm-edit (was: Re: [3/3] Do something with trusted networks)

[Pat Suwalski <pat suwalski net>]

Hello Robert,

Robert Love wrote:
> We definitely need a wireless properties editor.  I don't like the idea 
> of having nm-applet provide UI for editing the entries, but we should 
> have a separate (launchable from the applet, to be sure) utility for 
> editing the stored networks.

I've decided to take you up on this. If nothing else, so that I can 
mooch BEvERages off of you at OLS (you're coming for the kernel summit, 
I take it?). :)

I started a very simple gtk-glade project, just about a 100-lines of 
code. It can currently connect to the keyring, retrieve the known access 
points, write back, and delete. Super-simple, it's all functions and no 
interface at the moment.

Before I get too far on the interface, I want to solidify some things. 
First, only WEP keys are actually stored in human-readable form (the way 
the user entered them). So, I can't think of a nice way to let users 
handle something like WPA-PSK, unless nm-applet also stored the original 
passphrase in the keyring.

Next up, do we want people to be able to add a Network? If so, the 
nicest implementation (with the least amount of duplicated code) would 
be to have nm-applet listen to a dbus message asking it to pop up the 
"add network" dialog.

A longer term plan would be to talk to NetworkManager directly and show 
some live signal level in the editor, similar to how Windows does it. 
But the other issues are more important at the moment.

> If nothing else, we need a way to let users remove networks.

This is really easy to do. My program can do this already. In theory, 
you delete a network and when you select it in nm-applet it doesn't know 
anything about it and asks for a new key or whatever.

However, more functionality will be a big plus for 802.1x/certificates. 
Perhaps something that can even interface a little with Seahorse for 
certificate management down the road.

Whatever we decide here, it's largely a learning experience for me using 
libglade and gnome-keyring, and maybe some dbus.

--Pat