Guidance (from the dot.kde.org)

[This was posted on dot.kde.org, but I think it makes more sense to discuss it 
here. - Simon]

Vlad C wrote on the Dot:
> In general I share the goals of Guidance. However, I have a couple of
> concerns regarding duplication of work and integration with existing KDE/QT
> tools:   
> 
> 1) Shouldn't the "Configuration - Disk & Filesystem Configuration" module be
> accessible via remote:/ in Konqueror and be integrated with (or replace)
> KNetAttach?

"Configuration - Disk & Filesystem Configuration" is oriented towards 
modifying /etc/fstab and towards system admins and generally affects the 
whole system.

> I realize KNetAttach doesn't actually mount anything, but instead sets up
> network KIO slaves. I was thinking of modifying KNetAttach to mount KIO
> slaves onto the filesystem using KIO-FUSE
> http://kde.ground.cz/tiki-index.php?page=KIO+Fuse+Gateway    
> so that all apps (including shell utilities) can open/save to network
> locations set up under KDE.  

If KNetAttach could integrate with KIO-FUSE and kernel 2.6.14, that would be 
awesome. A user could then go to a remote dir via KNetAttach, cruise around 
and then run a non-KDE app on a remote file, with it all just working. It 
makes sense to have this better integrated into Konq so that people can 
"mount" remote dirs in an ad hoc way without having to go to "System 
Settings" (or Kcontrol) and breaking their work flow.

Speaking of which, I wasn't even aware that KNetAttach or remote:/ existed. I 
haven't found a link or any mention of KNetAttach or remote:/ in Kubuntu. 
This belongs on the "more inegration work needed" list.

> I think it would also be nice to let users browse the SMB neighborhood and
> click on the computer they want rather than making them remember the remote
> computer's name and location of the remote directory. 

This is already implemented in Guidance.
 
> 2) User Administration -- wouldn't it be better to use the YAST2 modules
> that pertain directly to these tasks? YAST2 is nicely modularized and built
> on QT, so I think select modules could be pretty painlessly integrated in
> mainline KDE. Not to mention the fact that YAST2 has been used for some time
> and is relatively bug-free.

The problem with Yast is that it _isn't_ very nicely modularised at all. They 
built a configuration scripting language and then built everything on top of 
that. This makes things nice and difficult. I don't think any other distro 
has picked up Yast after they GPLed it.

> 3) Display Configuration - A very thorny area due to the large variation in
> hardware. Wouldn't it be better focus work on improving the existing
> QT-based tool for configuring X-Servers (Sax2) and integrating Sax2 into
> mainline KDE?   

The simple answer is that I hadn't heard about Sax2 until this morning. :) And 
after doing some googling I can only find very little information about it. 
The projects at suse.com^Wnovell didn't list it. Is it even GPL?

cheers,

-- 
Simon Edwards             | Guarddog Firewall
simon at simonzone.com       | http://www.simonzone.com/software/
Nijmegen, The Netherlands | "ZooTV? You made the right choice."