[FreeNX-kNX] nxlaunch - a new GTK+ NX client based on nxcl

[Seb James]

Hi List,

I just committed a new NX client to the freenx svn repositories called
nxlaunch.

nxlaunch is built using GTK+. It uses nxcl as a backend.

nxcl is an evolution of George Wright's nxclientlib, but with the Qt
dependency stripped out. It builds into a library called libnxcl which
can be used to build an NX client. In the nxcl distribution, is a binary
called nxcl, which is a standalone NX client. It is designed to be
launched by a frontend client, which then communicates settings to nxcl
using dbus. This is how nxlaunch works.

This is a heads up for developers to have a go with the software and see
what fails to work.

Note that nxcl currently only works with version 3.0.0 NX Servers. I'd
welcome any patches to get nxcl to work with freenx and with NX
1.5.0/2.1.0 servers.

You need to obtain the nxcl and nxlaunch modules from the berlios svn
server and build both. Dependencies are just dbus and X for nxcl, and
dbus and the usual GTK libraries for nxlaunch.

There are a few things to do to complete nxlaunch:

* Fix it for non-gnome and kde sessions - a bit of translation is
requried between the text used in the NX xml files to specify
"gnome/kde/whatever" and the text sent to nxssh.

* Implement the delete feature to allow a session to be removed from the
list (pretty easy this, I think, shouldn't take long).

* Add NX 3 specific features into the configuration window - it
currently only has version 1.5 features.

* Bug test it!

* Add some nice icons in the connection list.

both nxcl and nxlaunch are released under the GNU GPL.

If you wish to develop a Qt/KDE/WxWindows/Tk/Fltk/MSWindows/MacOS NX
client, you can use nxcl as the core, and as long as your frontend can
link to dbus and you have a dbus daemon, you shouldn't have to do too
much work.

Beta file releases to follow when I've addressed the todo list.

Seb James