Re: zen and debconf
Ben Collins wrote:
>
> > A couple of hours ago it hit me, we shouldnt be trying to invent the
> > wheel, we can use a web browser as the defualt user interface and a web
> > server as the backend (e.g. the kernel web server). Using html should
> > have a number of advantages in the tools available to use such as web
> > servers, proxies, remote backends, remote UI, debconf package scripts
> > developed as html.
>
> Debconf already supports a web interface, with it's own HTML generation
> and minimum server. IOW, debconf wont need apache, khttpd or any other
> web server, since it's all built-in (correct me if I misunderstand joey).
>
My thinking was that the advantage of using html was that we wouldnt
have to write our own servers, there are heaps of tools that we can
already use.
Webservers for backends, web browsers for front ends, remote usage
capability, html editors, its all there.
If we are going to do anything fancy in our UI we could allow packages
to use there own html code to present there questions rather than
building a web page for them, this would add a large degree of
flexibility which i think is needed.
However we would have to ensure that any package that provides its own
layout would have to work in text mode browsers, or define it to only be
used in graphical (framebuffer, X) browsers.
We could pull the code from the current debconf for compatability.
Ages ago when the topic of redesigning the next isntaller came up (over
6 months ago) one thing that was talked about was that we should try and
make use of existing tools and leave development to other projects.
I think redisigning debconf in c is cetianly doable but we are getting
in deeper than we need to, it may result in a better product, it
certainly will take time to do.
I cant really think of any major drawbacks for just using html, using
html allows us to seperate our work from our tools. All we have to do is
put the pieces together, rather than make the pieces and then put them
together.
Anyway... you can probably see that im pretty enthusiastic for such an
approach.
Glenn
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