Liberator update (aka Indialer)

["R.G. Mayhue" <rgmayhue@serenesoftware.com>]

Fellow patriots,

I guess nobody uses wvdialer + wvdialerconf? I didn't get any feedback
from anyone at all. Oh well, I guess it doesn't matter because I've
decided on using eznet anyway. It's a a lot easier to write a frontend
for it and It seems like it will work for most situations. Does anyone
have any experience with eznet? I noticed that it's on the website
under programming tasks TODO list. 

I've nicknamed the project "Indialer" for lack of a better name. The
"liberator" will be constantly available by entering a "setup" mode
to reconfigure or add another ISP account. Similar to Kppp. I may later
write a Tcl/Tk frontend for X to mimic exactly the newt version to
minimize confusion and also use the same account information in both.
It will serve as my first Tcl/Tk project (panic).

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On another note. I want feedback on this, so please help your local
starving C programmer with "flames or praise" on this idea.

I've been toying with the idea of a complete console desktop for Indy.
Now before we get into any discussions on this, let me explain it's
reasoning.

What I propose here is an almost fully functional desktop as with X
window managers. Something that the (especially the newbie) user
can perform almost any command in a more visual way. Something that
would simply organize all the commands and applications available to
the user. For example using midnight commander as the file system
browser and Lynx as the web browser all conveniently located on one
common desktop with pop-up menus and online help. Even a clock and
calendar! Lynx could be used to display any HTML manuals and other html
doc's.

IMHO I think this type of thing would be very useful in Indy or any
Linux distribution for that matter. A common desktop would probably
hardly ever be used by the majority of users because of X window, but
they would be *real happy* when they found themselves at a console
command line and not being able to remember the commands. I have
trouble some times and need to look it up. Mostly not with the simpler
more often used commands like cp, mv, ls and others, but with less used
commands and some application names. Also with Linux being case
sensitive the problem is even more aggravated. For example is it
Xconfigurator or is it XConfigurator or xconfigurator???

This would solve most of the problems of the user being dropped at the
console with no help and unable to configure ppp or mail. The comfort
of being able to use a mouse and some type of visual way of doing
things is surly an advantage to the user. We could very easily provide
all the necessary things the user would need to configure ppp and be
online getting the help they may need. This could be Indy's first stop
out of the installation. Where the user is introduced to the desktop
and configures pap and other necessary things before moving on to X.

Okay, Okay, so I did a little explaining!! But I wanted everyone to see
the advantages to this idea. I'll write the code. As a matter of fact
I've already started some if it to experiment. There are many good
video libraries around that can provide a very nice desktops. But the
one used must run on any system, old or new.

Does anyone know of a project like this in existence already?

The topic is now open for discussion. Thank you.
--
R.G. Mayhue
rgmayhue@serenesoftware.com