knm-0.7 design decisions

[Helmut Schaa]

Am Sa 09 Feb 2008 05:47:50 CET schrieb Dennis Gilmore <dennis at ausil.us>:

> Hey I was curious as to why for knm-0.7 .  the interface was broken down to
> many applets?  right now i get a applet that lets me disable wireless or go
> to offline mode.  an applet for my wireless card and another for my wired
> connection.

That's the current state but I'm not yet sure if its a good idea or  
not. The best thing would be to have it configurable.

The reason for this decision was NM's possibility to have multiple  
active devices at the same time. And with one tray-icon you can only  
monitor online/offline state or one device's state.

Perhaps something like this is suitable (only ideas for now)
- Show one tray-icon for every _active_ device and remove it once the device
   got deactivated
- Show every device in the main-menu (of the main tray icon) and allow
   connection-selection through submenus (one for each device)

> When support is added for GSM devices i assume ill get a 4th applet.  using
> nm-applet i get to control all devices from a single applet the same as knm
> has always worked.  I also wonder where vpn connections will fall in here.
>
>
> I personally believe that everything should be contained in a single applet
> and that you should be able to do things like connection sharing within a
> single container.
>
> so far it seems kwallermanager, vpn, gsm, cdma,  support is missing.  and
> wireless/wired is incomplete.  is that a fair statement?   Im going to see

Correct but once the internal structure is finished adding a new  
device-type should be fairly simple.

Wireless connections are by far the most complex ones.

> what cycles i have spare.  since I have 4-6 weeks to have it in shape for
> fedora 9. or have another release without.

If you have some time spare for hacking I would appreciate any help.

Current open issues:
* Core
   - Storing of secrets in KWallet
   - Systray redesign
   - Storing of connections in the config file is not well tested yet
   - Possibility to have different connection types and their GUI in shared
     objects (mainly VPN)
* Connection types
   - Wireless/Wired cleanup
   - VPN (OpenVPN, VPNC and PPTP)
   - GSM/UMTS
* Anything else I don't remember

Regards,
Helmut