GNUe Traffic #39 For 27 Jul 2002
By Peter Sullivan
"we don't have many 7-11s up here" - "no 7/11 means no super squishies" -
"we're not at all interested in your private life"
Table Of Contents
* Standard Format
* Text Format
* XML Source
* Introduction
* Threads Covered
1. 17 Jul 2002 Query toolbar icons bug with multiple
Forms
2. 17 Jul 2002 - 19 Jul 2002 Technical Notes for GNUe
3. 17 Jul 2002 Contact and Donor Management
application for FSF
4. 18 Jul 2002 - 23 Jul 2002 (4 Response speed/time-out problem with
posts) Application Server
5. 18 Jul 2002 - 22 Jul 2002 Event handling for scroll bar widget
6. 18 Jul 2002 xml2sql for Firebird/Interbase
7. 18 Jul 2002 - 23 Jul 2002 GNUe Designer plug-in support
8. 21 Jul 2002 Possible methods to add to GNUe
Application Server
9. 21 Jul 2002 Overview of GNUe Tools on Windows 2000
10. 21 Jul 2002 Current status of acclite/NOLA
11. 22 Jul 2002 Using schema creation tools to set up
GNUe Applications
12. 22 Jul 2002 Background colours and images for
Forms
13. 22 Jul 2002 Application Server package in Debian
3.0 (woody) depreciated
14. 23 Jul 2002 GNU Enterprise overview
15. 23 Jul 2002 Using Forms as an alternative
front-end for gnumed
16. 23 Jul 2002 Problems with php globals off in DCL
17. 23 Jul 2002 GNUe and DCL in eWeek
Introduction
This Cousin covers the three main mailing lists for the GNU Enterprise project,
gnue (http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnue) , gnue-dev (http://
mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnue-dev) and gnue-announce (http://mail.gnu.org/
mailman/listinfo/gnue-announce) . It also covers the #gnuenterprise IRC
channel. A great deal of development discussion for this project goes on in
IRC. You can find #gnuenterprise on irc.openprojects.net:6667, or you can
review the logs (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/) . For more information
about the GNU Enterprise project, see their home page at http://
www.gnuenterprise.org (http://www.gnuenterprise.org) .
1. Query toolbar icons bug with multiple Forms
17 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 18 Jul 2002"
Topics: Forms
People: Dmitry Sorokin, James Thompson, ra3vat
Dmitry Sorokin (ra3vat) reported a problem with multiple Forms open at once -
"i did five forms instead of 5 pages in one tabbled - "connected" them with
navigator - now if I open one, get all rows with F8,F9, then open another
(first one still exist), query in second is not working" . James Thompson
(jamest) said he had observed the same behaviour - "what I found is that
multiple forms opened in navigator link the toolbar to the first form - the
keyboard should do the right thing" . He confirmed this was a bug rather than a
feature.
2. Technical Notes for GNUe
17 Jul 2002 - 19 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 18 Jul 2002"
People: Jason Cater, Derek Neighbors, Peter Sullivan, Nick Rusnov
Jason Cater (jcater) reported "we have a basic technotes system in each of the
modules - read */doc/technotes/00000.txt for more information or */doc/
technotes/index.txt for a listing of technotes (which are few and far between
at the moment)" . Derek Neighbors (dneighbo) wondered "should we make these
reallly really basic xml?" - "so you can make a nice index" . Jason said he had
"have a script that does that - it'd be trivial to do an html converter if need
be" . He emphasised that these technotes were not ""Docs" in traditional sense"
- just technical notes for developers.
Some days later (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/
gnue-public.log.20Jul2002) , Peter Sullivan (psu) asked "do you think that your
new tech notes could/should form the basis for the developer docs section on
website" ? Jason felt "it could be a big part. My thought process on the tech
notes: it takes time for us to open up tech references using XXXX editor,
figure out where something we're working on internally should go (or even if it
should), and then work it into the existing structure - but I can whip up a
tech note on something i am doing in 5 min or less which can later be put in to
the tech reference properly. /me sees technotes used a lot. Plus we could put
really internal stuff in there that probably has no business in a tech
reference" . He preferred not to use XML for these, as "simplicity is the key
here - i.e., literally whip up a technote in 5-10 min while still fresh in your
mind" .
Nick Rusnov (nickr) suggested "just use [] for section headings, ** for bold,
__ for undeline, plain ascii all the way. :)" Derek said he would prefer either
"a. its raw text with NO rules to formatting - b. if youhave formatting rules
you do it with xml" Nick said he was "proposing a tool that simply eases typing
xml - not a replacement format" . He would "write a demonstration program for
you, because you're so annoying and ornery" - "I'm going to write it in perl
because it'll take 5 minutes in perl because thats WHAT PERL DOES" . Jason said
"I had intended on a) - I see NO need for formatting in technotes" .
3. Contact and Donor Management application for FSF
17 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 18 Jul 2002"
Topics: Why GNUe?, Customer Relations, DCL
People: Bradley Kuhn, Jason Cater, Derek Neighbors
Bradley Kuhn (bkuhn) said the Free Software Federation (FSF) was "getting close
to really needing some hacker talent to build a functional contact and donor
management system" . They hoped to "make something other non-profits could find
useful." Jason Cater (jcater) noted thta Derek Neighbors had been "working on
such a beast" . He himself had been "writing a Rental Property management app
using our tools - and it is a piece of cake - the biggest problem I have is
defining exactly what I want" . He would release this as a GNUe application -
"if not official gnue, at least "endorsed" and free :)" . Bradley said "cool.
It would be good to see some apps out there that use the tools." Jason agreed -
"that's our biggest problem - Both jamest and I (we're the main forms, reports,
and designer coders) use GNUe extensively at work - so we know what it can do -
but until we get some real-world apps out it's hard to explain to people
exactly what we are capable of" .
Bradley asked "BTW, your forms library can have multiple interface generators
right?" Jason confirmed this - "GTK / Win32 is well supported - Curses / KDE /
HTML started, but not completed" , adding "at this stage, we are really
need-driven - so if there's a need, it gets coded - (we consider FSF a "need"
:)" .
Bradley said that the FSF had already "done a data analysis. RMS is pushing us
to do a simple hack so that we don't need to spend much staff time on it, which
would be sad, because I know the GNUe stuff could get us something really nice.
So my hope is to find volunteers who can help so we can spend minimal staff
time, and get something nice for FSF and the world -- instead of something
"barely adequate" for just FSF." Jason said "In all honesty, using GNUe would
probably be even quicker than a quick hack - the trouble is getting ppl started
on it" . Bradley agreed - "Any suggestions to get people started? What can FSF
do to spur things on?" Jason said his view was "we should do one or two USABLE
and USEFUL screens that you could start using right away - this would
accomplish several things: 1. Show that GNUe is capable of what you need - 2.
Get your users acquanted (and get feedback - positive or negative - from their
viewpoint) 3. Give your staff (if they are going to help us do your project)
example forms to work from" .
Bradley said one major issue would be importing and merging the data - "we have
existing data in a really shitty format that is big. To make the system useful
right off, it needs to have the imported data." This was "a big text file that
is transaction, not "contact" oriented. So, if you bought things /donated from
FSF twice in the last five years, we'd have you in twice, likely with slightly
different entries." He might be able to get some sample data, "although I have
to check that my script that removes sensative data works without fail." At the
moment, the data was maintained in "A hacked together Emacs Lisp application."
He expected that "The import process would have to be user directed." but "If
we can get to the point where we have a good table layout, we could do that in
house" - "asking the user: "Are these two transactions actually refering to the
same person?"" .
Later, Derek (dnieghbo) confirmed "i have the spec just havent had time" -
based on other feedback, he had "put a little on back burner until i could talk
to brad and got busy and didnt" . He did not have a problem with working to
deadlines, but was more concerned about starting from the data elements -
"thats how a hacker does it - im a business analyst - i want to talk to the
users" . Bradley said this was not a problem - "however, we don't have a ton of
time for needs analysis" and a good deal of work had already been done
internally on this. Derek said he had already had some discussions, "and some
of the needs weren't full developed (i.e. the questioning needed to go further)
" . Bradley said "I really invision doing something that can do some basic
things, and then improving over time with more needs analysis, user wishlist s,
etc." Derek agreed - "basic contact data - then build more" .
However, his contacts at FSF had been talking about much more complex data
analysis - "i.e. pulling up a company and trying to view the employees of that
company - by region - by name - and how important was it to manage 'companies'
as well as 'people'" . Bradley agreed - "one of the biggest things Ravi needs
is being able to tell the difference between "This company donates, and this is
our contact there" vs. "this person donates, and they happen to work at a
company" - right now, we have no clue to tell the difference" and they really
needed to be able to do both. Derek said he had already mocked up some possible
data layouts "working with postgres with the DCL contact data (iirc)" . He
suggested "i am thinking maybe i just get the data spec completely done" and
reviewed by the end users - "then perhaps you all could provide me with a copy
of the existing data store - and i can work on pushing the data into it (unless
you all would rather do that) - but im thinking just looking at the data and
attempting to map it on even conceptional level will give me MUCH greater
insight as to what you are tracking and will prompt me with LOTS of questoins
for" end users about how they would expect to handle different business
scenarios. Bradley agreed, but said "we do need a way for a user-directed data
cleanup" and "we don't want to focus too much on what we are tracking now,
becaues our whole current tracking doesn't work for what the organization needs
to be doing. We have an opportunity to do it right from scratch, becaues there
is really NOTHING there now. Just a big honking text file."
Derek also asked if the application could cover "copyright assignment's too" ,
to register details of copyright assignments by coders to FSF for GNU projects
(including GNU Enterprise). He had "been using dcl for it and its MUCH nicer
for me to bug poor youmans :) - but all the time i get asked does so and so
have assignment - and i woudl love to fire up an ssh tunnel to a db - and open
the fsf contact manager and tell them in like 10 seconds :)" . Bradley said
"actually, our GPL Compliance guy has a system that will grok copryight.list
into an SQL databse." He had some "security concerns with merging these two
databases. We have anonymous donors, etc." Derek said that "RBAC = Role Based
Access Control" should handle that, but Bradley was not fully convinced.
However, he noted "we just need to get a donor managment system running first.
;)" Derek agreed - it was more a personal convenience issue that he did not
always have access to his ssh keys to the FSF machine with the project's
copyright.list file.
4. Response speed/time-out problem with Application Server
18 Jul 2002 - 23 Jul 2002 (4 posts) Archive Link: "Error 110 testing appserver"
Topics: Application Server, Common
People: Vitor Figueiro, Jan Ischebeck, Reinhard M?ller, Arturas Kriukovas
Vitor Figueiro reported a problem "While testing appserver" . It was "Unable to
load locale information falling back to default English" and then saying
"Error: (110, 'Connection timed out')" . Jan Ischebeck said this "seems to have
something todo with your database setting, you should check if connection.conf
is holding the correct values. You need a [gnue] database def. in there. The
error message you got, should be changing to a better one, because I've fixed
the OnErr function in cvs." He had tried to reproduce the error on his machine,
but could not. He suggested "this is a RPC problem so you possibly want to try
the pw-xmlrpc adapter instead. You can activate it with gacvs -Z --rpc-type
pw_xmlrpc." . Vitor reported "that a client connection is always successfull at
the second attempt" which suggested that it was genuine response speed time
out. "The same happens when I run appservertest.gfd from a Windows client
connected to the same server. It only works when I call the form for the 2nd
time without shutting down the server" .
On IRC (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/gnue-public.log.19Jul2002) ,
Reinhard M?ller (reinhard) asked Arturas Kriukovas (Arturas) to have a look,
"as it seems to have something to do with encoding" . Jan Ischebeck (siesel)
said that "Although the error on the mailing list has nothing to do with
encoding (its seems to be a database problem) there is an other error in
combination with encodings. Because appserver isn't using an config file there
is no way to get it working with a "encoding = gConfig('encoding')" line. It
should be changed back to "encoding = connectData['encoding']"." Arturas said
"as far as i saw, connectData['encoding'] raised exception because it was empty
or not defined and database encoding was not set" . He would "add aditional
checking if connectData['encoding'] is defined and if not will read it's value
from config file - is this ok?" Jan said "there seems to be a check, if its not
defined (except KeyError) and if its wrong or empty (except
self._databaseError), possibly one of the error handlers has problems :)" He
updated CVS with a quick fix the problem, "but if you could look at it later
and possibly improve it, that would be great."
5. Event handling for scroll bar widget
18 Jul 2002 - 22 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 19 Jul 2002"
Topics: Forms
People: Marcos Dione, Jason Cater
Further to Issue #38, Section #6 (11 Jul 2002: Scrollbars and their events) ,
Marcos Dione (StyXman) queried why he had to "declare a default behaviour" in
GFInstance, "but then I override it in gfsb" . He wondered "if I do
self._eventHandler (event) in the wx's event handler, am I not skipping the
whole event mechanism?" Jason Cater (jcater) "thinks GFInstance provides the
handler - not the default handler" . Marcos said that his wx scrollbar widget
was "so specific that I'm rather reluctant to put it in gfinstance..." It would
"scroll the 'current;' datasource - where current is the datasource associated
to the block in which the sb is declared." Jason thought this sounded fine.
Marcos said that, ideally, "I would put a dummy behaviour in gfinstance and the
real behaviour in GFsb - because I prefer to keep the ui/gf relation tight -
but, it's your design."
Some days later (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/
gnue-public.log.23Jul2002) , Marcos said he still did not feel comfortable
putting the behaviour for a scrollbar "in the gfinstance 'multpiplexor'..."
rather than the GFScrollBar module. Jason explained "you need a single
controller monitoring behavior - it's next to impossible to keep track of the
"current" scrollbar and catch it's GFEvents exclusively - i.e., if you have all
GFScrollBars listen in on the events then you have to distinguish which one
should actually respond" . Marcos said he "thought there was a link between the
uiobj and the gfobl, and that way the behaviour could go directly in the gfobj
- and I have some problems cause I think I'll get some circular event
launching. The behaviout I want to give to the sb is to scroll the current
block datasource. So, when the 'cursor' of the datasource changes, the sb
should change, and vice versa..." Jason agreed - "that's why I think you can't
do it within the GFScrollbar code - or you at least have to multiplex the
request through GFInstance. The GFDisplayHandler uses the multiplexing route.
So, there are two things you can do: 1) Have GFInstance handle it all (easiest)
- 2) Have GFInstance listen for the requestSCROLLBAR event and then determines
which scrollbar/datasource is the current one, and directly call a method of
this scrollbar which then handles the logic." Either way, "you really can't
have GFScrollbar listening for the events - as all the Scrollbars in the form
would get the event" . Most Forms widgets used the first method "but the
GFDisplayHandler (keystrokes, et al) use #2 - the only reason GFDisplayHandler
is different is that each entry widget can have a different *type* of
displayhandler" .
Marcos noted that "in UIbutton's buttonHAndler" this was done by "a call to
_eventHandler instead of 'raising' a event." Jason was not conviced that
UIbutton was a good model - it worked that way "only because UIbutton doesn't
have its own dispatchEvent" , which was the more standard way of handling this
- "search for event.eventHandler = self.dispatchEvent" . Marcos said things
were becoming "_a little_ clear now..." .
Marcos asked "how do I 'hook' a new listener to certain event? I need to know
when the datasource does something with the visible records... with
registerEventListeners?" Jason agreed - "you will need to hook into GFBlock
(add some code there)" . Marcos confirmed "like, doing a special event just for
a ocassional scrollbar?" .
Later, he uncovered another problem - "I added a method on gfblock that
registers scrollbars.\ a scroll bar created registers itself as a scrollbar for
that block. then, the block, when updates, updates the scrollbars registered.
*but* now I'm registering" using the User Interface ScrollBar module rather
than the generic GNUe Forms ScrollBar module.
6. xml2sql for Firebird/Interbase
18 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 19 Jul 2002"
Topics: Common, Designer
People: Bajusz Tam?s, Jason Cater
Following on from Issue #38, Section #11 (12 Jul 2002: Including data in GNUe
Application Server schema definitions) , Bajusz Tam?s (btami) asked for "some
help on xml2sql - i try to make a firebird.xsl" but was having problems with
the tags for Primary Keys. Jason Cater (jcater) said "the "correct" way will be
- the old-style is from the scripts used in DCL -
but they have a few GObject no-no's in them so the one in GNUe cvs will have to
be the new style" . Bajusz asked for a sample file in the new format, "and then
i can make firebird.xsl" .
7. GNUe Designer plug-in support
18 Jul 2002 - 23 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 19 Jul 2002"
Topics: Designer
People: Jason Cater, Peter Sullivan, Derek Neighbors, Andrew Mitchell, Bajusz
Tam?s, Jan Ischebeck
Jason Cater (jcater) announced "I have completed my masterpiece - Designer will
never be the same again. The wizard/template/scripting support in Designer has
been taken one step further - all "Creation Actions" in Designer are now
implemented (or once all are converted) as Scripts[wizards] - so people can
extend the functionality of Designer without knowing Designer internals by
creating Plug-Ins. All basic actions in Designer will be done via plug-ins too,
so people can replace the default functionality with their own support" . He
felt this was "a huge step in the life of designer" . Peter Sullivan (psu)
asked "does this also pave the way for Designer to move beyond being "just" a
Forms Designer to the sunlit uplands of Reports Designer, App Server Designer,
etc?" Jason said "we've already started that - that's part of this cvs breakage
since last release. We have the starts of a Navigator designer - we do have a
Schema designer - HOWEVER - right now, only the Wizards work (i.e., you can use
Designer to extract table definitions from, say, Postgres and save them in the
GNUe Schema format)" . He had re-engineered Designer so that all the code that
was specific to designing forms was now separated out into a specific module.
Three days later (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/
gnue-public.log.22Jul2002) , Jason Cater (jcater) predicted "designer's about
to kick some serious arse - by the end of the day, "insert a dropdown entry"
(using my nifty new plugin architecture) will autocreate any needed
datasources" . Derek Neighbors (dneighbo) suggested "i think the marketing
materials can say 'Designer: The Ultimate Arse Kicker' and it wont be a lie :)"
Jason worked some more on the non-stable CVS code base, managing to bring down
X at least once, but felt it was coming along nicely. He accidently pasted some
code in the main channel, but explained "that is an example of a plugin - a
completely working plugin - that creates a basic entry" . Andrew Mitchell
(ajmitch) asked "so you're gutting & rewriting large chunks of code?" Jason
said "not really - designer hasn't really done much in the way of "creating
things" i.e., it excels at moving crap around but the creation stuff is
lacking" until this latest re-write.
He added "/me isn't all that gung-ho about plug-ins in general but I'm trying
to make it easier for others to contribute - iow, /me wants to make it so you
can add features to designer without fully understanding what goes on behind
the scenes" . Derek was not sure that was a good idea - "dont know what you are
doing - thats ok we will let you break it anyways" - especially with him
around. Jason said "my main goal is to NOT be the only one contributing to
Designer :) - /me has even scared jamest out of designer so I'm all alone in
there and it's a lonely place to be" . Derek agreed - "all kidding a side i
think its an excellent move - reminds me of delphi :) - i.e. we will give you
the shell, beat the hell out of it at will" . He "really wants to look at cvs
integration tools" so that "can check/in/out files and such from within
designer - not full cvs client or anything - but some stuff" .
The next day (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/gnue-public.log.23Jul2002)
, Bajusz Tam?s (btami) reported "i sended a SimpleReport wizard" and asked
Jason to have a look at it if possible. Later, Jason confirmed "btami sent me
the first Report wizard !!!! - /me hasn't played with it yet" .
The next day (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/gnue-public.log.24Jul2002)
, Jan Ischebeck (siesel) asked "did you have a look at the schema creation
wizard I've added?" Jason said "yeah - just committed a patch to it so it will
write out to a file - pretty cool, though" . He added "of course, that's why I
like a plug-in architecture - as I would have never thougth about doing
something like that - but it's a great addition" . Jan asked "how can I create
new instances out of a wizard?" . Jason thought he would "probably need to add
a convenience method to do that - as it is easy to do if you can get at the
Designer.py instance but getting that far back would be ugly (something I want
to hide from plug-in writers)" . Jan suggested "adding a link to the designer
instance to start(...) ? or, (this could be easier) to create a
wizard._MainInstance automagicaly."
8. Possible methods to add to GNUe Application Server
21 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 22 Jul 2002"
Topics: Application Server
People: Ariel Cal?, Jan Ischebeck
Ariel Cal? (ariel_) said "i think you sould add some methods to geasList -
canonical things on lists, like getLenght isEmpty, isFirst(geasItem) isLast
(geasItem) previousItem - the last if _resultset allows to. I think they should
be simple calls to the cooresponding methods in ResultSet. By the way what is
the difference between ResultSet and RecordSet?" Jan Ischebeck (siesel)
explained "Resultset = result of an select operation - RecordSet = one row." .
Ariel said "I don't know if such methods are specified someway in ODMG, if so
you can follow their spec" . Jan said "I will add these methods (if possible) -
ODMG use a different approach, because you get a collection, which can be a
Set, Bag, List .... (like in java) - in the end I like to use something similar
like ODMG, java, something that is supporting locking and which is thread/multi
client safe. But I still don't know the best way to do that. Another important
point is that it has to be easy to implement, and easy to understand." Ariel
asked whether there would be "some kind of caching mechanism (for long long
long lists) or it is yet implemented in resultset?" . Jan said "there is kind
of caching in result set, but not in the dbdriver..."
9. Overview of GNUe Tools on Windows 2000
21 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 22 Jul 2002"
Topics: Forms, Designer
People: Jan Ischebeck, Jason Cater, Reinhard M?ller, Derek Neighbors
It was asked how to install the GNU Enterprise tools on Windows 2000. Jan
Ischebeck (siesel) pointed to http://www.gnuenterprise.org/downloads (http://
www.gnuenterprise.org/downloads) , saying "for eval purposes, ignore
"snapshots" and "prereleases"" . He believed that "the windows binaries already
contain everything needed for running the gnu enterprise tools :)" , including
setting up menu entries and desktop icons. "with designer, you create forms and
code. "forms", the program itself, interprets these forms, displays them and
handles the database resp. application server connection" . The .gfd (GNUe
Forms Definition) files produced by Designer were "xml based markup - gnue
makes heavy use of xml: markup for forms definition, reports definition etc."
To connect to a database, "you have a connections.conf file where you have to
specify the host, db name and database driver" - you could have multiple
connections. To see how to design simple forms, "a good starting point is the
zipcode example. my first running gnu enterprise app was done with that :)" .
Derek Neighbors (dneighbo) confirmed there was a sample entry for an Oracle
database in the default connections.conf file. Jason Cater (jcater) pointed out
that "unfortunately, the precompiled win32 exe's won't support oracle - as to
create the exe's, we'd have to include the Oracle run-times and of course, that
is a big licensing no-no :(" . Jan said alternatively "you can build it from
source. i don't know how hard it is to make the oracle driver work." Reinhard
M?ller (reinhard) confirmed that Forms could support grid-like layouts - "grid
in forms is done by giving a counter to a widget - that means that you have an
entry and set the counter to 10 then you have the entry 10 times below each
other. I would believe that designer supports this but i'm not sure" .
10. Current status of acclite/NOLA
21 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 22 Jul 2002"
Topics: Financials (Accounting)
People: Daniel Baumann, Jason Cater, Derek Neighbors
Daniel Baumann (chillywilly) asked about progress on acclite/NOLA, as discussed
in Issue #36, Section #6 (27 Jun 2002: NOLA and acclite - free software
financials packages) - "just asking because a guy in my LUG was looking for
something to use" . Jason Cater (jcater) said "I think MicahY is leading the
way in NOLA conversion" . Derek Neighbors (dneighbo) announced "we have at
least 2 companies committed to using GNUe in a manufacturing setting -
specifically BOM, Invoicing, Inventory" - "so the answer should be soon. I was
hoping to have some demo stuff ready by Aug 12th" to demonstrate at
LinuxWorldExpo, but "real life may prevent that - plus i owe the FSF some
contact stuff" .
11. Using schema creation tools to set up GNUe Applications
22 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 23 Jul 2002"
Topics: Designer, Common
People: Jan Ischebeck, Jason Cater, Christian Selig, Ariel Cal?
Jan Ischebeck (siesel) reported that Ariel Cal? (ariel_) had "proposed to add
an "initialdrop" attribute to (boolean) in the GSD file format. It
would create a DROP TABLE statement before the CREATE TABLE command." He noted
"because creating tables will be handled by gnue-common (in the future) this
option won"t be needed (in the future) because there could be a dialog opening
(in designer) which ask the user if he want to keep his old tables with the old
data or not." He could "imagine a future senario like that: using designer to
create a schema definition, creating tables with this schema definition, by
just pressing "Create tables" button. i.e. designer uses a new function in
common which create tables, indexes, etc., if a table already exist a warning
message is shown and the user can choose to between leaving this table alone,
or to drop it and recreate it. In this case, there is no need for that
"initialdrop" attribut. right?" Jason Cater (jcater) said "well that's kind of
the direction I was wanting - however I want the common support to be smart
enough to be able to do "alter tables" or give the user the option of
restarting from scratch i.e., that will be vital for our packaging" . Jan
agreed - "we need an package format and an installer soon. The installer would
use gnue/common to create/modify the tables defined in a GSD file. btw. it
would be cool to have a package tool in designer, where you can just choose
some GFD, GND, GSD and build a package." Jason said he was "working on that -
(notice the new Project menu in Designer :)" He did not have a name for the
project file type yet - he had "only implemented the Wizard stuff for the
schema designer - haven't started on the graphical part" . Christian Selig
(sledge_) asked whether this would be "ms-access like visual creation of tables
with all the connected id fields?" Jason said "something like that" - or
"something like pgaccess - only not pg-specific :0"
12. Background colours and images for Forms
22 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 23 Jul 2002"
Topics: Forms
People: Jan Ischebeck, Andrew Mitchell, Nick Rusnov, Jason Cater, Derek
Neighbors, Reinhard M?ller
Jan Ischebeck (siesel) said he wanted "to add my VERY important "change
background color" patch ;)" Andrew Mitchell (ajmitch) felt "oh that'd be so
hot" , adding "/me_wants_that!!/index.html" , as "gray is so boring" . Nick Rusnov (nickr)
said it needed "to add gradient support" . Andrew felt it was "lots easier to
support single colours - /me looks up the wxpython docs" . Jason Cater (jcater)
said "yes, gray is boring - that's why I prefer grey" . Nick accused Jason of
being "entirely too boring - you should be full of life like siesel" . Andrew
noted "ooh, there's a wxWindow.SetBackgroundColour method - just let 'colour'
(or color if you prefer) to be an optional attribute of the form" . Nick felt
"if you wa;nt other colours shouldhn't you use a local theme for your widget
set like gtk or winders or whatever - shounldn't it pick up whatever colours
the native widgets are using?" Andrew felt "these UI enhancements win over the
stupid users & management ;)" Nick said he might need a white background as "I
need forms to look just like paper forms" . Several people proposed other
colour schemes of various levels of garishness. Derek Neighbors (dneighbo) said
"actually at one time we discussed being able to take a .eps file or such - and
having it be the 'background' for a form" . Jason commented "yeah, but thank
god y'all sobered up" .
Later, Reinhard M?ller (reinhard) said "i believe that backgruond color in
forms _could_ be useful but in another context - e.g. i have clients that have
set up a live database and a testing database and they have requested that if
they log into the testing database then the background should turn into red -
but of course i don't see it as a priority" .
13. Application Server package in Debian 3.0 (woody) depreciated
22 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 23 Jul 2002"
Topics: Application Server
People: Reinhard M?ller
Reinhard M?ller (reinhard) asked "i guess most of you noticed that woody has
become stable" - but "did somebody also notice that woody still contains
geas-0.0.6?" In the midst of various smutty jokes by other people about frozen
woodys, he noted "i wrote a mail to the one who packaged it some _months_ ago
requesting to remove it again" as that version of GNUe Application Server
(GEAS) was depreciated and no longer being developed, as per Issue #19,
Section #1 (28 Feb 2002: GNUe Application Server (GEAS) version 2 Discussion)
.
14. GNU Enterprise overview
23 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 24 Jul 2002"
Topics: Human Resources, DCL, Forms, Application Server, Common
People: Carl Kigundu, Peter Sullivan, Derek Neighbors
Carl Kigundu (clock) had a "question about modules (eg acc or HRM), do I have
to create the tables and business logic myself?" Peter Sullivan (psu) replied
"we don't really have the modules/packages yet - there are some proposals on
the website - but no real work done on implementation yet" . Carl deduced "so
without the modules and packages, this means ... 1. build tables in database 2.
get designer and design forms which interlock with database 3. use forms?"
Derek Neighbors (dneighbo) said "sounds like you about have it down - when will
that hrm package be ready :)" ? He asked "so what are you looking for in HRM -
i think some hrm would be VERY easy to whip up - in fact some of the contact
stuff from DCL might even be some of a start" .
Peter explained that " Double Chocco Latte (http://dcl.sf.net) " was "a combo
bug-tracking/project mgt/general contacts apps - currently written in php
rather than the GNUe tools - but we have merged and are now working together -
even to the extent of derek doing the last offical release of DCL ;-)" , as
referred to in Issue #37, Section #5 (6 Jul 2002: Security release of DCL) .
"At the moment, it is a classic LAMP (linux, apache. mysql, php) app - except
it actually has a good UI. But derek already has some DCL forms for various
admin functions in two tier (i.e. form talks directly to d/b)" . Derek said
that the "progression will be - make it use forms" as an alternative to the
"existing php (web) interface" - "then long term as appserver gets stable then
both the php and forms versions could use the appserver - eventually the php
version would be replaced by form www driver" . However, "im taking babysteps
(as thats all time has been allowing)" .
He explained that Application Server was different from, but depended on, GNUe
Common - "gnue-common is the sink where we put things that get reused :) so the
db-abstraction, rpc-abstraction and trigger system is all in gnue-common" for
use both by the Application server and "by reports/forms etc" . Their debian
packages were, as of time of writing, "pretty hosed" - "DCL debs work well
though :)" Later, he explained "all the developers use cvs versions so our
'motivation' to have debs is low - and we havent been able to sucker someone
else into doing them" . Installing from source was not too bad - "if you get
cvs or tarball do setup-cvs.py from the root of the tarball idr and follow
instructions and you are golden i.e. its an interactive setup deal - does
appserver and such too" .
Earlier, he confirmed that GNUe was python-based - "appserver was originally
done in C and called GEAS (short for GNU Enterprise Application Sever) - we
have redone in python and made use gnue-common and now call it appserver to try
to prevent confusion :)" You could use either python 2.1 or 2.2.
15. Using Forms as an alternative front-end for gnumed
23 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 24 Jul 2002"
Topics: Forms
People: Christian Selig, Jason Cater
Christian Selig (sledge_) asked "does anyone of you know gnumed?" He said "they
seem to rely on clever db structures, so i thought whether it would be possible
(in the future) to use forms as an alternative client (though their current UI
is already cute and user-friendly)" . Jason Cater (jcater) said "we've thought
about it - and I think derek might have approached them about it - that's all I
know though" . Christian said "there's no urgency, i'm just longing for a free
practice management without all this "open source" bubble - i have potential
customers, and i don't want to install some proprietary crap that i can't fix;
combining gnumed and gnue in the long term is quite obvious, but i'll just wait
and see" .
16. Problems with php globals off in DCL
23 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 24 Jul 2002"
Topics: DCL
People: Derek Neighbors
Problems were reported trying to set up DCL on FreeBSD with php 4.1.2. Derek
Neighbors (dneighbo) explained "php changed its settings - it turns globals OFF
by default now - you need to change you php.ini file to set them to on - and
that should solve your problem" . Also, with Internet Explorer, you had to "go
to your dcl installation with a trailing /. If you ever visit dcl without the
trailing slash, you need to close that browser window" and start again.
Looking at the relevant line of code, Derek concluded it was a problem with the
DCL domain on FreeBSD - "i really need to patch this - windows has same
problems" . He asked "can you paste here you equivalent Database connection
info" ? It appeared that "for some reason dbType is coming out as blank" so it
was trying to open file '/GNUe/.html' instead of '/GNUe/mysql.html'. He suggested a temporary
patch to manually include mysql.php, but this generated another error. Derek
"is thinking something is up with globals still" . Dropping back to an older
version of php was suggested as a possible solution, but Derek said "no - i see
the problem" . The database configuration needed to be literally 'name' =>
'default', rather than replacing 'default' with the real hostname. He confirmed
it was erroring "how i would expect with globals turned off" - with register
globals turned on, "i see it just fine" .
17. GNUe and DCL in eWeek
23 Jul 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 24 Jul 2002"
Topics: Why GNUe?, DCL
People: Derek Neighbors
Derek Neighbors (dneighbo) asked "um did anyone else know we were in eWeek (
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,367215,00.asp) this month?" as part of an
overview of several open source and free software ERP/CRM applications. "like a
paragraph or two on us with some screen shots?"
Sharon And Joy
Kernel Traffic is grateful to be developed on a computer donated by Professor
Greg Benson and Professor Allan Cruse in the Department of Computer Science at
the University of San Francisco. This is the same department that invented
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