SEUL: RE: Proposal

["Orn E. Hansen" <oe.hansen@isholf.is>]

Þann 26-Feb-98 skrifar bruce@va.debian.org:
> 
> If there are any programmers in the SEUL project who have concrete
> tasks they want to do, and can use the support of a _working_ organization,
> I'd invite them to become Debian developers and make use of our resources.
> Proposals should include an outline of the task you want to achieve, and
> should show that you've studied how that same task is being done on existing
> Linux distributions. You should be willing to do most of the programming on
> your own, and while some coordination with others is necessary, you should
> expect to be the design lead for the project. Send me mail if you're 
> nterested.
> 
  I don't really think that's fair, but maybe I'm not the perfect
judge of that.

  At leat in the UI group, Rick and I have done some work.  Rick has
made a way to stop the loop-o-death with XDM.  And I've pinpointed
the place in the source of XDM, where the loop occurs... and provided
changes in the source code to solve that.  We've also found serious
flaws in the way, X windows installs... the Drivers for VGA and SVGA are
extremely cut down... and totally unworkable for any real use.  Which
simply means, that if a person can't find his/her card on the card list
(s)he is unable to get a working graphics, which logically should be either
a VGA or SVGA mode (generic modes).  But especially the SVGA generic mode
only provides 320x200 resolution, which is unusable for anything except
looking at it and seeing that X works.  On top of this, there are no
settings of generic VESA modes (640x480 at 60Hz, 800x600 at 72Hz), which
should definately be provided for the generic drivers.

  Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think working on this is a useless task
as this is what the user starts with.  This is his/her first impression of
the Linux environment, and when (s)he can't get a generic graphics mode
running... that doesn't really speak well for the OS, that's being
promoted.  This needs to be solved... and yesterday.

  Apart from that, I'm creating a ledger or book-keeping program, which
you can take a look at at http://w1.352.telia.com/~u35202061 or as
http://oehansen.home.ml.org and I have code to show for the work I've
done on it... it's a huge program, one that is getting bigger all the
time, and includes a server, client and a language interface.  The language
will get bigger, as it is still under development but I intend to have it
provide full access for the user over both internal and external database
tables.

  I think this is pretty concrete...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Orn Einar Hansen                         oe.hansen@oehansen.pp.se
                                          oehansen@daimi.aau.dk
                                        voice+fax; +46 035 217194