GNUe Traffic #46 For 14 Sep 2002 By Peter Sullivan The human condition defined - "how's it going sir?" - "cloudy, cold, no coffee, no women - and lots of work. good ay, uh?" Table Of Contents * Standard Format * Text Format * XML Source * Introduction * Threads Covered 1. 30 Aug 2002 - 5 Sep 2002 (11 Colours and logo on new web site posts) 2. 5 Sep 2002 (2 Running setup-cvs.py to install, not posts) individual setup.py scripts 3. 4 Sep 2002 GNUe developers meeting in Germany 4. 4 Sep 2002 Getting Started with the GNUe Tools 5. 5 Sep 2002 - 9 Sep 2002 (1 Patches from papo and CVS access policy post) 6. 5 Sep 2002 - 8 Sep 2002 (5 Focus problem with multi-line Forms posts) 7. 4 Sep 2002 XML tools for use with GNUe 8. 4 Sep 2002 - 9 Sep 2002 php and perl Forms clients for GNUe 9. 4 Sep 2002 GNUe on linuxfund.org 10. 5 Sep 2002 Using GNUe with SAP-DB on Microsoft Windows 11. 5 Sep 2002 gnue.conf file now optional 12. 5 Sep 2002 4suite and licensing issues 13. 6 Sep 2002 Standard output tags for Reports 14. 7 Sep 2002 GNUe Forms and Oracle SQL*Forms 15. 9 Sep 2002 (2 connections.conf file for GNUe posts) 16. 9 Sep 2002 (2 Changing font sizes in Designer and posts) Forms 17. 8 Sep 2002 DCL and Bayonne on GNUe website 18. 8 Sep 2002 - 9 Sep 2002 Using gtk2 native UI as alternative to wxPython UI 19. 8 Sep 2002 Setting up the CVS version of GNUe 20. 8 Sep 2002 - 10 Sep 2002 Passing parameters to Forms 21. 8 Sep 2002 Format for loading Application Server object definitions 22. 8 Sep 2002 - 9 Sep 2002 GNUe on WOPN 23. 8 Sep 2002 - 10 Sep 2002 Free financials packages for small businesses 24. 8 Sep 2002 Current status of GNUe and documentation 25. 9 Sep 2002 - 10 Sep 2002 Application Server - GEAS vs. appserver 26. 9 Sep 2002 Installing GNUe on RedHat GNU/Linux 7.3 27. 11 Sep 2002 (2 Typo bug in Designer posts) 28. 10 Sep 2002 DCL for GNUe project 29. 10 Sep 2002 XUL/Mozilla Forms client 30. 10 Sep 2002 Minor bugs in Forms 31. 10 Sep 2002 Multi-table datasources 32. 10 Sep 2002 Debian packages for GNUe 33. 10 Sep 2002 Changes to GNUe website breaks CVS 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. Colours and logo on new web site 30 Aug 2002 - 5 Sep 2002 (11 posts) Archive Link: "New website colour scheme" People: Peter Sullivan, Jason Cater, Derek Neighbors Peter Sullivan said "OK, based on comments in IRC, I don't think that anyone (including me) is totally 100% happy with the colour scheme on the new website. So I've pulled together a few alternatives for people to look at and provide feedback, or suggest other alternatives in our search for something that looks both good and suitably professional." Various people posted comments, based on varying browsers and operating systems. Peter summarised the results "for this distinctly unscientific survey" which showed an overall slight preference for option "3. Light blue navigation bar and no border." Earlier, Jason Cater said "I really wish we could get a clean logo" Derek Neighbors said "I dont mind cleaning up logo and putting it in many different colors and such, but unlike others I like the actual logo itself. It is very simplistic should transfer well from anything to letterhead to business cards." Jason disagreed - "it relies too heavily on shading and anti-aliasing." 2. Running setup-cvs.py to install, not individual setup.py scripts 5 Sep 2002 (2 posts) Archive Link: "Problem installing Forms and Designer on Debian" People: David Goodenough, Derek Neighbors David Goodenough reported problems trying to install Forms and Designer under Debian GNU/Linux. He had "downloaded the tar.gz files, unpacked them into separate directories, and in each I ran ./setup.py install." He was getting error messages trying to start either Forms or Designer, however. Derek Neighbors suggested "Instead of going into each tool and running setup.py instead at the root of the tarball run setup-cvs.py this should solve your problems." 3. GNUe developers meeting in Germany 4 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 05 Sep 2002" People: Christian Selig, Jan Ischebeck, Arturas Kriukovas, Reinhard M?ller Christian Selig (lupo_) noted that "i have organized money to host a european gnue developers meeting" . He had "already found a good place" reasonably equidistant for himself, Jan Ischebeck and Reinhard M?ller. "i don't know whether our baltic developers" such as Arturas Kriukovas "can join" - an "economy class flight (vilnius-ffm) costs about 5000Eur :(" Jan (siesel) noted "Its quite cheap to go by bus from lithuania to germany, I just dunno, how long it takes :( :(" . 4. Getting Started with the GNUe Tools 4 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 05 Sep 2002" Topics: Common, Designer People: Sacha Schlegal, Jan Ischebeck, Christian Selig Further to Issue #45, Section #18 (3 Sep 2002: GNUe dependencies in Debian GNU /Linux) , Sacha Schlegal (SachaS) thanked Jan Ischebeck (siesel) "for your guiding through the intallation last night" . Jan asked "you will use mysql ? I would recommend to use postgresql instead, its not much more complicated than mysql, and many samples work better using postgresql. The forms access is transparent" as GNUe Common provided database abstraction, "but most samples have database creation scripts which are written for postgresql - there are just a few ones, which are using the new GSD format" which used GNUe Common to write database-independant creation scripts. Sacha reported "the property inspector seems to not let me change values, easaly, sometimes." Jan said this was a known "wx python bug. You have to make the property window so large, that the scrollbar disapears. Then you can change values again." He noted that "designer is under heavy development in cvs, so it will segfault sometimes :(" He explained that the g???cvs files were "the scripts to start gnue programs directly from cvs source tree. gfcvs is for gnue-forms, gfdes for gnue-designer ... So you just ddon't have to install every package after every cvs update" . Christian Selig (lupo_) said that bug reports for Designer should be sent "to designer-support at gnuenterprise.org, with version and OS information" - of course, including a patch to fix the bug was even better! He felt "the code is quite understandable, even if you are not a python crack and wxPython guru, you will grasp the code quite fast" . 5. Patches from papo and CVS access policy 5 Sep 2002 - 9 Sep 2002 (1 post) Archive Link: "[Gnue-dev] Via Libre's contribution to GNUe" People: Federico Heinz, Derek Neighbors, Jason Cater, Marcos Dione Further to Issue #45, Section #7 (28 Aug 2002: Patches from papo and CVS access policy) , Federico Heinz said that V?a Libre had chosen GNUe as the framework to build papo, as they liked its design, vision, license and "active, friendly development community" . They had also always recognised that GNUe was a work in progress, but "decided that those were not intractable problems" since they had the funding "to solve (not work around) any issues that could come up." There was still no doubt this had been the right decision, but there were some practical problems they had not anticipated, both in terms of the length of time taken to apply patches they had submitted to the main code tree, and the lack of time to discuss new development ideas with the main GNUe developers. This was causing them problems, as the flip side of their funding was a need to meet deadlines. He cited the multi-table data source patch, as discussed in Issue #35, Section #9 (24 Jun 2002: Multi-table Datasources) as a specific example. They had had to maintain their own branch of GNUe simply to make progress, although they did not want to, both for PR reasons - "the *last* thing we want is to be perceived as rogues" - and for practical reasons - "As GNUe keeps advancing, our branch becomes outdated and we have to somehow merge the changes regularly, which consumes a great deal of time from our folks, time that would be *much* better devoted to writing code." He felt "we must put some mechanism in place by which our contributions can flow more freely into the GNUe tree. It must be a mechanism that doesn't tie up our already overloaded project managers, so we can have time to discuss with them on design and implementation issues. And we need this mechanism to be in place fast, because every day our branches diverge more, and that's the last thing any one of us needs." He felt that at least one PAPO developer should be given CVS write access. "The current situation is hurting both PAPO and GNUe, let's do something about it!" . On IRC (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/gnue-public.log.05Sep2002) , Derek Neighbors (derek) said "i will attempt to get all patches applied tonight" . Federico Heinz (perlhead) said "thank you for the offer. However, my mail has broader implications than just applying the patches. My guys have been preparing patches repeatedly, only to find that they become outdated before they get applied. And even if they manage to create valid recent patches for our current needs, and you manage to apply them tonight, we still have the problem of what will happen with our future patches." Derek said "i will respond to the email, but in fairness doing your own cvs tree really hurts" , although "a major server issue" for GNUe "hasnt helped things" . Federico said "I know the separate tree hurts. We don't like it, and I hope I made it clear in the mail. It hurts *us*. The problem is that our patches didn't start being this huge. They began life as simple things (save for some major functionality improvements) But as time went by without them being incorporated, they accreted. Most of them could have been incorporated as small fixes, only time conspired against it." He stressed "*we want to kill our branch* *we don't like it* *we did it because we had no other choice*" , adding "Trust me, V?a Libre will continue to contribute to GNUe in a major way. We want GNUe to succeed as a coherent project. The success of our own project depends from it." Derek suggested that sending patches to a named contact for review before they were applied "is no different than say the linux kernel" . Federico agreed, "But as far as I know, major contributors to the kernel have commit privileges to their areas of activity." Derek said "that is our problem - we dont have yet 'areas of activity'. We have one giant cvs tree that has no discrimination. That is high on our list to break cvs into smaller modules - so we can give commit access by module and such" . Federico suggested "You guys are overworked as it is. You don't have the *time* to the segmentation. There are more important things in the queue." Derek said "then we have to continue with patches i think. We have been burned on more than one occassion doing differently. Even in patches via libre has done, things were discussed in irc and everyone seemed in agreement - yet it was coded in way that was not agreed" . He was sure "it was just a communication breakdown (so not criticizing coding or coding techniques) - but the idea behind patches is that stuff like that gets caught pre checkin not post checkin" . Federico said "I doubt the patches were coded in a way that was agreed to be *not* the right way. I'm absolutely sure the intent is to do things the right way." Derek agreed. Some days later (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/ gnue-public.log.10Sep2002) , Federico was discussing "an issue wrt the encoding of UI strings" , and concluded "OK, maybe this is *again* due to the fact that we're using an older version because our patches aren't in yet." Jason Cater (jcater) said "we need to discuss the patches as in your email" . Federico said "I am not aware of any thechnical or legal issues holding the incorporation of the patches" - "If I undestand it correctly, the problem is that you guys are too overwhelmed with work." Jason said he had seen the mail, but "gave myself a few days to cool off before responding" . Federico said he had "tried my best to make the e-mail as matter-of-fact as possible. And made sure that I wasn't throwing blames around." Jason said "I wholy admit that we are not handling the patches in the best manner possible - as they shouldn't sit around for a month or two BUT by the same token" the patches submitted did not always match what he felt had been agreed on the mailing lists or in IRC, and in some cases were trying to take GNUe in directions it should not go. Federico said "Technical issues are, IMO, the least pressing. We *are* aligned with GNUe's direction. Of course, this doesn't mean that we won't ever have diverging views. We like to think that we are at least able to contribute some original thinking. This will most likely cause a few discussions and disagreements in the future. But that's for the good of the project." However, "The problem that looks harder to solve is of a more practical nature. You guys are *swamped*. You do great work, and have created an amazing project. That takes a lot of effort. We acknowledge that, we know that you are not ignoring our patches." Jason agreed, "but where do we go from here?" Marcos Dione (StyXman) said "well, now we're trying to resync with *the* gnue and then, I guess, resubmitt the patches..." Later, Derek Neighbors (derek) said "we need to sit down and talk" - "and discuss how to get your tree and our tree back in synch so you can kill your tree and work out of cvs head - and we will institute some policies to ensure quick applying of patches" . 6. Focus problem with multi-line Forms 5 Sep 2002 - 8 Sep 2002 (5 posts) Archive Link: "[Gnue-dev] focus nightmare" Topics: Forms People: Marcos Dione, James Thompson, Peter Sullivan, John Lenton On IRC (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/gnue-public.log.05Sep2002) , Marcos Dione (StyXman) said "I have a very serious focus problem" James Thompson (jamest) suggested "lay off the caffine and MTV - it'll help ;)" . Marcos explained "the problem is that I have this nice fowm with lookups - the lookips are the same entry with rows=5" . If he started "writing in this 3rd entry. the focus is 'there', even the 'cursor' (that '|' thingy) but as you write the leters appear in the 1st (!!!) entry" . If there were several rows already queried back, the focus for entry always seemed to be the first row after the queried rows. Later, Marcos posted his problem to the mailing lists, saying he had now found the problem, "but not how to fix it." He noted that if "I use a slow machine, I see that, when I click in a 'wrong' row, the cursor (again, that '|' thing) goes to the 'correct' (in the terms of gnue) field and *then* to thew one clicked. it's a fast flicker, I was not seeing it until I started to use this machine" Peter Sullivan suggested "The way you describe it working is the way I would expect it to - any new input *should* go immediately after the last existing record, not to some arbitrary later row entry" . John Lenton said this was not really the point - "the problem is that the focus splits, i.e. gnue is focused on one place and the ui on another. Whether or not gnue or the ui are right is a different matter." Marcos agreed - "that's why my suggestion is to tell wx who must be the real widget with the focus." 7. XML tools for use with GNUe 4 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 05 Sep 2002" Topics: Application Server People: Daniel Baumann, John Lenton Daniel Baumann (chillywilly), continuing his work on an XML/Object parser for GNUe Application Server from Issue #45, Section #13 (1 Sep 2002: Using the Common XML parser in Application Server) , was "being evil and using xml.dom.minidom - it is complainign abot some mismacthed tag but I can find the typo" . He opened the XML in Emacs xml-mode instead. John Lenton (Chipaca) felt that "xml-mode is useless without a good DTD :(" but Daniel reported "C-c C-v gave a better error than the SAX parser" - "end tag for "interface" omitted, but OMITTAG NO was specified" - "it helped me find the error even with no DTD. DTDs are lame anyway ;) - schemas is where it's at" .He asked "anyone know if there's debian packages for the 4suite (http://4suite.org) set of xml tools" . Sablotron, as discussed in Issue #37, Section #4 (4 Jul 2002: XSLT support in GNUe Reports) was suggested as an alternative. 8. php and perl Forms clients for GNUe 4 Sep 2002 - 9 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 05 Sep 2002" Topics: Forms, Common People: Charles Rouzer, Derek Neighbors, Peter Sullivan, Jan Ischebeck Charles Rouzer (Mr_You) was "wonderin how I can make a web-based forms client persistent-like - might require javascript or :-( flash" . Derek Neighbors (derek) suggested "hmmm look at the" php Forms client "in cvs?" Charles said he had - "gotta love variables named "$this" :-((" He was "working on a Perl UI driver and webmin module - wondering how navigator and the client will integrate best" . Derek said "um variables like $this are HIGHLY acceptable - seriously - its an 'instance' of an object" . Charles said "I've never done OOP - will do that some other time - I want somethin workin first ;-)" . Some days later (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/ gnue-public.log.10Sep2002) , Charles Rouzer (Mr_You) said he was "working on a GNUe Forms Client perl module.." and was "looking for comments on what I might "seperate" in my code.. which would be used in the perl module/library." Peter Sullivan (psu) said "I think the key message is to think about how much you have to do in perl and how much you can reuse - i.e. I would definantly re-use GNUe Common" . Charles agreed. Peter even felt "you might get 90% of what you want for 10% of the effort by just teaching the python version of forms to handle wrapped perl triggers - but, this is free s/w and it's your itch ;-)" Charles asked "ok, how would I use GNUe Common?" Peter said "there's some docs somewhere, I'm sure - jamest wrote something for reinhard when we decided to make appserver use common" . Charles noted "the php forms client has its owncommon" . Peter said he had been under the impression that Jan Ischebeck (siesel) "had decided to use the python one" . Later, it was explained that Jan has started his own common.php file to do database abstraction, but had decided to use the python-based GNUe Common as it also contained useful code for dealing with master/detail and other issues such as XML-RPC. 9. GNUe on linuxfund.org 4 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 05 Sep 2002" People: Derek Neighbors, Andrew Mitchell Further to Issue #45, Section #5 (29 Aug 2002: GNUe on linuxfund.org) , Derek Neighbors (derek) reported "we are getting clobbered at linuxfund.org now" and changed the channel topic to "Login to http://www.linuxfund.org and put your penguin pesos where your pie hole is and vote for GNUe!" He noted "im not sure highest vote wins - i think it might be simply it helps their board decide" . Andrew Mitchell (ajmitch) felt "gnue is far more important than some silly game" . Derek agreed, "but certainly those workign on the game dont :)" He might mention linuxfund in his forthcoming interview on WOPN internet radio. 10. Using GNUe with SAP-DB on Microsoft Windows 5 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 06 Sep 2002" Topics: Designer People: Arjen Runsink, Jan Ischebeck, Bajusz Tam?s, Andrew Mitchell, Derek Neighbors Arjen Runsink (Suit) was "checking out GNUe and to get started fast I am getting the windows forms and designer and Sap-db. Are there any caveats with this combo or will it be fairly straight forward?" Jan Ischebeck (siesel) said that "The most difficult part is to edit the connections.conf file to setup Sap-db as your favourite db" . He was not sure if there was an example for SAP in the file, but it should be the same basic format as "for postgres etc., you just have to set "provider = sabdb"" . Referring to Issue #41, Section #4 ( 31 Jul 2002: SAP-DB and GNUe on slashdot) and similar threads, Arjen said "I have come to believe that sap-db is one of the developers' favorites, so I expect it is well integrated with designer?" Jan said "almost every database which supports introspection should work well with designer" . He could not remember "if the sapdb driver was bundled with the windows installers for forms and designer :(" - he suggested asking Derek Neighbors (dneighbo) as "he is the sapdb specialist." Bajusz Tam?s (btami) was fairly sure the SAP-DB drivers were "not boundled with" the Windows setup.exe install. Arjen said he was "currently installing sapdb, will see what happens" . Later, he reported an error message "Driver not installed: sapdb" . Andrew Mitchell (ajmitch) guessed "you'd need a python sapdb driver" . Arjen downloaded it "from sapdb.org, checking where to copy - what version - looks like version 21 and copy both in forms and designer dirs. Ok, I got a login promp when choosing connect" , pasting his error message, "And login does not work, same username does make me connect to database using sapdb tools :-(" . However, he noted "Hmm, login in to db with sapdb tools an lowercase username an pw worked. Doing the same with designer not. But than uname and pw in Uppercase and it worked !" . He asked "Hmm, wouldn't I be able to select a table for my form and add some of the fields for it?" . Bajusz suggested "try wizards" . Arjen confirmed he could "get the wizard form but nothing to chose from (?) - argh, I can connect to my test database, but cannot link with any table in it, is this totally broken in the windows package or should I read some fine manual that I just can't happen to find?" Bajusz wondered "maybe the introspection in gnue SAP-DB driver was not completed in 0.3.0 - you can try CVS version, or another DB" . Arjen asked which alternative database would be best. Bajusz said "on linux potgresql, on win firebird/interbase or mysql - but if you can meet with derek, he will help you with SAP-DB" . Arjen said he was "not especcially hung on sap-db, atm I will try anything that works, but as I read you correctly I should go and get CVS and all deps and run it on my linux box" . Bajusz said "you can try CVS on win32 too" , although you then had to install the dependencies manually - "wxpython and egenix-mx too" . Arjen "wonders why, if all that nice stuff is in CVS like sap-db and interbase, a new binary release has not been released including those ;-)" . Bajusz explained that the "core peop are busy" . 11. gnue.conf file now optional 5 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 06 Sep 2002" Topics: Designer People: Christian Selig Christian Selig (lupo) reported a problem with designer, before noticing "hey, according to my config file, this and the option below are outdated" . It was explained that gnue.conf was no longer necessary - all tools would assume appropriate defult values for conf options. Therefore, a quick way of diagnosing problems like this was to rename the gnue.conf file to something else temporarily and see if the problem went away if all the default values were used. 12. 4suite and licensing issues 5 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 06 Sep 2002" Topics: Application Server, Why GNUe? People: Daniel Baumann, Christian Selig Daniel Baumann (chillywilly) felt that "btw, 4ODS is pretty kewl - an ODMG" (Object Data Modelling Group) "3.0 implementation" that was "part of 4suite ( http://4suite.org) " . They were "doing some pretty interesting work - all 100% python - they are doing like an enterprise data repository thing" . Christian Selig (lupo) said "it looks like zope on dope, the xml way" and asked whether it was "a possible candidate for the "document store"?" Daniel said possibly, but "they use a non-cpyleft license" . Christian confirmed that their "FourThought License" was derived from the Apache license - "they have only replaced the names and addresses." Daniel quoted from the GNU web site which said that the Apache License was "a permissive non-copyleft free software license with a few requirements that render it incompatible with the GNU GPL. We urge you not to use the Apache licenses for software you write. However, there is no reason to avoid running programs that have been released under this license, such as Apache." He was not sure why it was GPL incompatible, unless it was "because of the advertising clause and naming crud" which was "very similar to original BSD license" . He pointed to "gnu's explanation (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html) of why the advertising clase is BAD" . Daniel noted "hmmm, they are arging that they wanted to protect the name 4Suite - that's why they used this original BSD-like license. But that makes no sense to me as copyright and trademark are different issues all together...I don't see how letting someone freely modify and redistribute the code effects trademark/branding - no one else can come along and use your trademarked name even if they have all your code." It was noted that copyright, trademark and patent were all different issues, which were all too often lumped together as 'intellectual property'. 13. Standard output tags for Reports 6 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 07 Sep 2002" Topics: Reports People: Bajusz Tam?s, Jason Cater, Derek Neighbors Further to Issue #45, Section #4 (26 Aug 2002: Producing FO (Formatted Objects) output from GNUe Reports) , Bajusz Tam?s (btami) asked "about standard output tags for reports" - "why not FO" ? Jason Cater (jcater) said "best I can tell, FO specifies physical formatting properties (much like an XML version of PCL or Postscript) such as fonts, margins, font sizes, colors, etc - as opposed to a functional markup (like docbook, latex, etc)" . Bajusz agreed - "yes, it is for "cosmetics" formatting - but reports needs this too" . Jason asked "so are you thinking we take the FO elements that we need and add them to our spec - or just use all of FO as it sits?" Bajusz was not sure - "maybe it's too complex for a business report" . Jason was also "torn" - "the GNUe Reports engine could output FO markups right now - currently, we have the SimpleTabulation style we could easily add a FormattingObjects style that is nothing but XSL-FO so the out: tags would actually be FO tags" Bajusz could not "imagine how designer will work with complexity of FO..." Jason agreed. Jason noted that "if we go that route I'd want us to commit resources to doing a free python-based implementation - I have issues with depending on a java program" . Derek Neighbors (derek) was more forthright - "i wont depend on FO from java (end of story) - i will write my own python FO - or i will use reportlabs or such and go straight from xml to native pdf or such" . Derek also said that he "thought we had some" formatting tags defined already "as i had to have that to make the HTML reports" , pasting an example. Bajusz agreed, but felt that "these far from complete for GNUe:Reports:Standard" . He quoted a previous post of Jason's which said that the Reports Engine should allow for "a PDF (or HTML or TeX) formatting engine (instead of an external XSLT script) for reports of type GNUe:Reports:Standard that the engine could load." However, Bajusz noted that this needed standard tags agreeing - "the original monthly.grd was good enough for a sample, but wasn't declared as a gnue standard" in the same way "as forms has "standard" tags" . 14. GNUe Forms and Oracle SQL*Forms 7 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 08 Sep 2002" Topics: Forms People: Dmitry Sorokin, ra3vat It was noted that GNUe Forms looked quite familiar to those used to Oracle SQL*FORMS and PL/SQL. Dmitry Sorokin (ra3vat) said that the "main forms developers" were "also users (former?) of Oracle Forms" . 15. connections.conf file for GNUe 9 Sep 2002 (2 posts) Archive Link: "Connection for Postgres from Designer" Topics: Designer People: David Goodenough, Jason Cater David Goodenough reported "Now Forms and Designer install and run properly" but he could not find out how to define a connection to a postgreSQL database. Jason Cater said "You will need to modify /usr/local/gnue/etc/connections.conf and add an entry for each database you will use." He explained "If you have a production PostgreSQL database database called "tiger", your connections.conf file might look like:" " [prod] provider = psycopg host = localhost dbname = tiger" Then "in your forms definitions, your datasources will have a database="prod" property." This example assumed that the psycopg driver was being used to connect python to PostgreSQL. 16. Changing font sizes in Designer and Forms 9 Sep 2002 (2 posts) Archive Link: "Designer fonts too big" Topics: Designer, Forms People: David Goodenough, Jason Cater David Goodenough noted that, in Designer, "many of the fonts appear too big for the data and the window." Jason Cater said "The wizard resizing issue is being fixed in CVS" and "hould be resolved in the next release" . Also, "If the actual form layout (both in designer and in the GNUe Forms Client) is appearing larger than you'd like, you can add a pointSize=11 into your gnue/etc/gnue.conf file (under the [forms] section.) There should be a sample entry commented out." 17. DCL and Bayonne on GNUe website 8 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 09 Sep 2002" Topics: DCL, Bayonne People: Andrew Mitchell, Peter Sullivan, Derek Neighbors Andrew Mitchell (ajmitch) asked "hmm why is bayonne under tools (http:// www.gnuenterprise.org/tools/tools.php) yet dcl under packages (http:// www.gnuenterprise.org/packages/packages.php) " on the website? Peter Sullivan (psu) said that "although at the moment" Double Chocco Latte was "in effect a package that includes its own tools eventually it should become a "normal" package using the main GNUe tools w/ the PHP front end as an option" . Derek Neighbors (derek) agreed - "dcl is a package - i.e. it is an producitity application w/o doing anything. Bayonne is a tool - installing bayonne doesnt do anything useful for you until you write applications with it - much like forms and such" . 18. Using gtk2 native UI as alternative to wxPython UI 8 Sep 2002 - 9 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 09 Sep 2002" Topics: Forms, Designer People: Andrew Mitchell, Derek Neighbors, Daniel Baumann, Jan Ischebeck, Peter Sullivan, Jason Cater Further to Issue #45, Section #2 (23 Aug 2002: Forms i18n support in wxPython and pyGTK) , Andrew Mitchell said it was a "good thing that gtk2 driver was committed, i broke my wxpython installation" . Derek Neighbors (derek) asked "does it look nice the gtk2 one? and what did you ahve to do? i.e. im interested in trying gtk2 but nervous - can i run gtk2 and gtk at same time" ? Andrew said "yes, it's designed to work together" . He had switched as "the sid wxpython package only compiled for python 2.1" and "2.2 is default now" . Derek said "i dont compile - i quit a while back - 12 step program (http://gnue.org/ ~dneighbo/funny/compilers.html) and all - it really got me cured" . The next day (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/gnue-public.log.10Sep2002) , Andrew asked Daniel Baumann (chillywilly) "you still got wxpython installed?" Daniel said "it's b0rked now - can't install it - bitches about python" . Andrew said that "wxpython needs rebuilt against python 2.2" . Daniel said that "jan said you can get the deb and do a --force-depends on it - I dunno how well that works" . Andrew said "badly, i'd imagine" . The next day (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/gnue-public.log.11Sep2002) , Jan Ischebeck (siesel) noted that the "wxpython...deb is still waiting to be rebuild for python2.2 :( :(" . Peter Sullivan (psu) noted that "ajmitch is using the gtk2 driver" for Forms "as a result" . Jan suggested "what about a rewrite designer to use gtk2 ;)" Jason Cater (jcater) was not keen. 19. Setting up the CVS version of GNUe 8 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 09 Sep 2002" People: Andrew Mitchell, Sacha Schlegal Sacha Schlegal (SachaS) asked whether triggers had to be written in code. Andrew Mitchell (ajmitch) said yes, but "python is easy :)" Sacha said that, as of time of writing, "i download the source from cvs (cvs update) and install it each time. how does the other way work, with the cvs scripts?" Andrew said that "./setup-cvs.py is easier" . This "makes scripts that let you use the cvs copy of gnue and sets up the conf dir" . There was no need to, as Sacha suggested, "go into common, forms and designer and do a setup in each." Andrew explained that "setup-cvs.py creates programs with different names like gfcvs for gnue-forms" so that developers could test the CVS version without over-writing the official releases. 20. Passing parameters to Forms 8 Sep 2002 - 10 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 09 Sep 2002" Topics: Forms, Reports, Common, Navigator People: Marcos Dione, Jason Cater, Peter Sullivan, Jan Ischebeck Marcos Dione (StyXman) asked "is there a way to pass parameters to forms?" . Jason Cater (jcater) said "not at the moment - we have code in reports that allows for parameter passing that I want to move into common - so forms can use as well" . Marcos said he would "take alook and try to port it to forms." . Later, he asked "what are the parameters used for in reports?" Jason said "reports can use them 2 ways - 1) in the conditions for datasources - so you can run gnue-reports myreports begindate=09/02/02 enddate=09/03/02 - 2) the conditions can just appear in the output of reports i.e., gnue-reports myreports custom_title="My Sales Report" - I would foresee forms using it similarly - i.e., it could use them in datasources to limit a query or it could be values that trigger code could access. Datasources inherently support parameters - but only reports currently passes them. It should be trivial to get forms to - it just hasn't happened yet" . Later, Jason explained "Reports has a GRParameter class that subclasses common's GParameter - so it all happens automatically. We just need some code in the gfclient.py code that takes the parameters from the command lines and sets the GFParameter object with the value - then GDataSources will take over from there" . Marcos agreed - "I saw the part where sys.argv convers into self.PARAMETERS or the like an then they're copied all over the code till they become GRParameters..." . Earlier, Marcos said that the reason he was looking at parameters for Forms was because "we're thinking about a kind of 'app' that would integrate a lot of forms into one single app. in a different way that navigator does. it would also handle app config and, more specifically, users and roles." It was suggested that it might be better to discuss this, as Navigator was supposed to support role-based access control at some point, and tools to manage things like connections.conf had also been discussed previously. Peter Sullivan (psu) suggested "Actually, if connections.conf was XML, we could use DEsigner to edit it ;-) - then it really would be "the emacs of GNUe"..." but got roundly troutslapped. Later, Jan Ischebeck (siesel) asked "what do you think about a special dbdriver to edit the connections.conf in gnue-forms" - "using forms itself to edit its own config files?" Jason said he had "thought about that before - /me even considered making IMAP and POP3 dbdrivers for gnue-common - but then the more I thought about it the more I thought that might be hellacious to maintain for the little benefit derived" . Jan asked whether "you think that writing a seperate app, or config dialog to do this is easier?" Jason said "I think a popup dialog in Designer to do this may be best - I'm honestly not sure - I'm torn in several directions" . The next day (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/gnue-public.log.10Sep2002) , Marcos said he was "still fighting with the parameters. I can't find where are they handled to datasources." Jason said he had "just added the feature you need - but I need to remerge back into head" . Marcos asked "how do you pass params to datasources?" Jason said it was already in the GNUe Reports parser, and would be in the GNUe Forms parser as well - "search for 'cparam' in GRParser" . Later, Jan Ischebeck (siesel) asked "how do you want to use parameters" in Forms? "Just for triggers?" Jason said "I'm not 100% sure yet - but we already have the capability w/reports - and there's time in the past I've needed them" . Marcos said "we were thinking of calling forms with data already there." Jason said "I've needed to do that as well - where you can change the dataset used just by passing a parameter" . Jan asked whether "the default values for a parameter are defined in the" .gfd (GNUe Forms Definition) file - this did not seem to be right, as " just take a "name" and no "value" attribute." Jason said "in reports, I had a separate tag that defined valid parameters and any default values" . He had not considered "default values w/forms" - the cparam tag was for something else. Jan suggested "why not use the same tag in forms as in reports" , although he noted "that the tag in report has quite a few attributs. - I don't know if we could use/need/implement all of them ( 'name' 'required' 'limited' 'default' 'description' 'source' 'type' )" . Jason felt "we at least need 'type' and 'default'" . Jan asked what the 'limited' and 'source' options were for. Jason said "that is primarily for reports" , explaining "the plan was to have a gnue-reports client that would prompt for the parameters - if they weren't specified on the command line - and source= could point to a datasource that would give valid values and limited= would specify the valid values (neither of those 2 options are implemented)" as of time of writing. Jan thought "we still could use "source" in forms" as paramters "could be f.e. provided by a database." He felt that "using parameter tags with source attributs could be a SQL less solution replacing "simpleQuery" commands in triggers" . Jason felt "imho that's making parameters too complex - i.e., then you have a datasource not a parameter" . Jan accepted this, but felt that "the main usage for parameters in forms is to send information from a main form to a popup subform" , which Jason agreed with. Jan felt "IMHO its just would be easier to share the parameter definition with reports than create a new one" . Jason said "it should be rolled into GClientApp - but for the time being I'm going to leave them as they are" . The next day (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/gnue-public.log.11Sep2002) , Marcos asked whether "the only way to pass parameters" to Forms "is through command line?" Jason said "the runform() method can be passed a dictionary too - and iirc gnue-navigator already had a tag (not sure if it's fully implemented yet, but the stub was there)" . 21. Format for loading Application Server object definitions 8 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 09 Sep 2002" Topics: Application Server, Designer People: Ariel Cal?, Jan Ischebeck Ariel Cal? (ariel_) was "reviewing the code in _featuretest and" wondered why "the field type in geas_meta_object is varchar" rather than a look-up to another table of allowed values for Object types. This would save space, mean that "only 'known' types can be inserted" and that "specific info on the type can be stored in other fields of geas_meta_type, for example if type is 'function' the language or wathsoever" . Jan Ischebeck (siesel) said "The idea was to only use one table at the beginning, and split it up into multiple tables later." Ariel said that, as of time of writing, "geas_meta_object is filled 'by hand' - i guess tomorrow a parser will do the job, but which language will be used? gsd, idl, odl, godl or what?" Jan said "there will be many parsers which can fill the internal structures" . It was suggested that the intial version of appserver should not focus on objects until the basics were done. Jan said "since I 'm not 100% conviced that odl/odmg 3.0 ... is the best choice for internal structures etc. I would prefer a own format first. I think using .gsd as a start would be ok. we can later add all that ODMG features to appserver and to the godl / odl parsers" . Ariel said "separation of code and definitions is not a bad thing, it improves reusability - you can improve the code for a single method without reloading/recompiling the whole thing" . Jan felt "I don't think, that putting code and definition together is a must, but it makes things much easier. btw. appserver could provide a "load new code into function X" method, which solves that problem. I just want to program like in f.e. python and not in the way like C, where I always have to change two file (.h, .c) if I modify the interfaces" . Ariel asked "what about the old 'gcd'" as a format? Jan said "I've started writing a parser for it, but there seems to be a heaps of reasons not to use 'gcd', I just don't remeber :)" Ariel suggested "can i improve gcdparser.py just to convert all the" existing .gcd (GNUe Class Defintion) definitions from the draft GNUe package proposals into the .gsd (GNUe Schema Definition) format. Jan said "that would be great :)" . Ariel said this would probably be a one-off conversion - "what we need is only the output, i.e the gsd's" . Jan felt "it would be much easier to use geas to build up its db structure and then use designer to create a gsd out of it" , but Ariel was "not sure it will work, because 'type' in gcd doesn't create classes but just reusable definitions" . 22. GNUe on WOPN 8 Sep 2002 - 9 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 09 Sep 2002" People: Andrew Mitchell, Jason Cater, Derek Neighbors, Daniel Baumann Daniel Baumann (chillywilly) noted that Derek Neighbors (derek) would be giving an interview about GNUe on WOPN, the internet radio station dedicated to open projects and free software. Various technical details about listening to the ogg-format broadcasts on broadband (http://stream.wopn.org:10000/ wopn-broadband.ogg) were discussed, including the need to have a working sound card installed(!) Later, Andrew Mitchell (ajmitch) reported "he's on WOPN" . Jason Cater (jcater) wished "we could get a transcript - /me is really curious what kind of promises derek is making that we will have to deliver :)" Andrew noted that Derek had mentioned a "new release anyday? now that's something new... ;)" After midnight (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/gnue-public.log.10Sep2002 ) , Derek said he had "got nervous :)" but Daniel felt "you did a great job, imho" - he "has it recorded :)" (over 100MB of .ogg). Andrew said that the WOPN host had "said he might try & split out the interviews into separate files" for the WOPN website archives. Later, Daniel said he "now has a voice to put with the nick(s) derek, dneighbo, etc." Jason said "scary, isn't it :)" Daniel liked "his answer to "what is something you hate doing?" - "any physical work"" . Derek told Jason "if people start emailing you asking when the next release is and why they cant get it in debian - its chillywilly's fault - not mine" . He had "mentioned most of the db drivers came out of a pissing contest between you and jamest one afternoon as well :) - so you got plugged personally even" . Andrew "wonders how many people listened to the interview - 10, perhaps? ;)" .Derek said at least "3 - you, hans and chilly ;)" . 23. Free financials packages for small businesses 8 Sep 2002 - 10 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 09 Sep 2002" Topics: Financials (Accounting) People: Derek Neighbors, Hans Kugler, Nicholas Lee, Jason Cater, Daniel Baumann Derek Neighbors (derek) was not keen on Quickbooks - "not only is it far from free software - but its an ASP - the evil twin of prop software - if i get NOLA working" that would be a better alternative as a financials package for small businesses. Hans Kugler (LuftHans) said "currently there aren't any Free Software packages, so we'll have to use a non-free package until one is - that or just not track accounting stuff, which is what we currently do" . Derek suggested "paper/pencil - or large marker ;)" . Later, Nicholas Lee (esands) said he had tried "the cvs version of gnucash and the new business conponents. Now I'm fiddling around with acclite to see what thats like." He felt that "the business part of gnucash is functional - It has promising and is usable. However, if you've used gnucash before you'll know when I says its very manual" , reflecting the fact that the main developer had (not unreasonably) "designed it so far mostly for his own use" . Derek said it really needed to be developed to do "reads/writes to SQL database - i.e. flatfiles are just not suitable for business (imho)" . Nicholas said "I figure its current target is home size businesses" . Derek agreed - "to me its a quickbooks replacement (or sounds like) - which there is a market for, but not market persay that gnue is going after" . Later, Nicholas said "its probably worth changing the acclite footer to point at the gnue web site instead of the nola site. Its not polite otherwise." Derek said "i figured not giving them attribution was worse. fwiw: the idea is not to have a fork - just to finish our regutting and give back to noguska - at which point if they dont like we fork" . Nicholas said "Sure, but for the purposes of bug reports acclite is not their problem. Since its not their development" . Derek agreed, "though it was never meant as public consumption - short of gnue folks helping us review our changes :) it kind of grew into more than that, because we were slow getting changes back to nola" . Some days later (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/ gnue-public.log.11Sep2002) , Nicholas asked "is there a reason why you guys decided to base acclite on this instead of sql-ledger?" Jason Cater (jcater) said that "sql-ledger looks really bad under the hood" . It was noted that sql-ledger was written in uncommented perl. Nicholas felt that "nola has some issues as well. Like at the moment it doesnt seem to have a sales tax acculation flag for vendor invoices. Might have missed it though" . Jason agreed there were issues - "that's why we branched it :) - but the underlying structure looked by far more advanced than most of the free accounting packages we looked at" . Later, Jason asked "is gnucash actually usable?" Daniel Baumann (chillywilly) said "it's missing some small business features - they are adding that - I think it may be in cvs" . Jason said "there's no way I'd use gnu-cash for small business - it just ain't right" . Daniel said "well of course not - it's "personal" finance and as derek mentioned before - a different market ;)" Nicholas said "gnucash is usable. And their are some small business features in the cvs; they are workable, but require some more polish. I think it does have scheduled now in the cvs as well - I'd check but my machine with the gnucash cvs deb is still broken" . Nicholas asked "is it possible to get read access to the acclite cvs? Would make hacking on it a little easier." Jason said "unfortunately we don't have anonymous cvs for acclite - I can set up ssh-based access" . Nicholas said "That would be better than downloading the 2Mb *-09-10.. and discovering it was the same as 09-08." . He asked "what's the goal with acclite at the moment? What sort of work needs doing? is it tidying up postgres issues, like that ''/ '0' defaults patchs I forwarded though or working on the gnue side of things?" Jason said "I think there are still a few oddities left over from our conversion from mysql to postgresql - but the biggest goal is to write GNUe Forms screens for the various PHP screens. Probably the first goal is little stuff like you posted - that are showstoppers when testing" . Nicholas asked about coding style. He "hates the (non) ident in nola's php files. Crazy mad-driving screen fulls of characters..." . Derek agreed - his php coding/indentation style was heavily influenced by python, "though im not a nazi - i.e. if its code im not complaining - but this is one reason i liked python so much - is it elminates this debate entirely :)" 24. Current status of GNUe and documentation 8 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 09 Sep 2002" People: Nicholas Lee, Derek Neighbors, Hans Kugler, Peter Sullivan Further to Issue #46, Section #23 (8 Sep 2002: Free financials packages for small businesses) , Nicholas Lee (esands) agreed that "Definitely gnue and gnucash target different markets. The big different though between the two products is that gnucash is stable having reached MILESTONE 1. Gnue is still work in progress. Useful no doubt, but still needing further work." Derek Neigfhbors (derek) said "we have really hit past our milestone one - as our first milestones were for the framework not the applications - and soon now, we will enter first phase of application development. Expect working goodies within the month - and kick butt goodies within 6 months" . He had sold GNUe "to a few customers last month alone - there is this fixation that 'shrinkwrap' means good and complete" which he felt was often unwarrented - "oh well different markets i suppose" . Nicholas said "Sure, but you are a core developer. Consider the part-developer who spends a lot of time doing business stuff (ie. me ;). I'm ready to do some work (hell I've compiled gnucash cvs to for myself) but I don't have a lot of time to spend trying to get things going. Or at least that's been my experience so far with gnue. Of course since its a FS/OSS type project I've missed much in the last three months. Things are probably different again" . Derek said "on a BLANK debian install gnue takes no longer than say 20 minutes to install (including postgres) - on redhat/mandrake then yes its hell, but i cant help crappy packaging ;)" Nicholas felt that "the lack of documentation make it tricky to use. Although I haven't checked the document in the last couple months." Derek agreed that the "yes docs are not quite there - problem is its a framework not an application - so making docs is difficult - as there is a certain amount of given one needs to know - until we get a real users manual" . But "docs for a framework (that covers all users) is a HUGE task - and we dont want our developers doing it - and we havent had volunteers :)" He accepted that "we have personal needs for gnue - and so we are concentrating on the tools and our needs - we would love someone to help with docs" . Nicholas agreed "itches to scratch are the reason projects like this exist. Wouldn't be fun for you to do it otherwise" . He suggested "You guys probably need something like a wiki/fom. Make document in the first instance a communitity task" Derek felt that "wiki's are good for informal documentation and throwing ideas around - but i dont think they shoudl be a documentation substitution" . Hans Kugler (LuftHans) felt that "docs with room for comments on the end are better, they're semi-wiki" . Nicholas felt "I think though at the moment you don't really have any formal document. Something that's easy keep up to date is more important than something that is 'formal'." Derek said that "we like to deal with thing slike we do in business world i.e. get up and go to someones desk - in our world the equivalent is IRC" . Nicholas said "Business process is important to document. Otherwise if you have outsides /newbies entering a business unit without knowledge of how tasks are processed its harder to bring them up to speed without effective resources" . Derek said "you misunderstood me - i didnt say business process was unimportant to document. At work we have a professional technical writer that comes to our meetings and translates our development process - i dont have that here ;)" He noted that Peter Sullivan (psu) "does this to a degree with his kernel cousins and i adore him dearly for it" . Nicholas agreed - "definitely. kc is the only reason I'm able to follow what's happening with gnue sometimes" . 25. Application Server - GEAS vs. appserver 9 Sep 2002 - 10 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 10 Sep 2002" Topics: Application Server People: Phil Cole, Derek Neighbors, Reinhard M?ller, Nick Rusnov Phil Cole (fil_c) asked "what's the policy on submitting patches... say if I've found some typos in the docs, or maybe a howto for redhat 7.3?" Derek Neighbors (derek) said "for now sumbit to info@gnue.org - if its for other than minor documentation we will need copyright assignment" He appreciated that copyright assignment was "a barrier, but have solace that there will be no scares (like there was with python recently) about who can protect the code and whom cant" . Phil said "ok... it's a tiny patch to change GEAS to "App Server" in the main README. But I've sent it to info@gnue.org to get a taster." Later, Reinhard M?ller (reinhard) confirmed "I highly appreciate your patch - we have defined it as incorrect to use the acronym "GEAS" outside the code - to clearly distinguish between (old) GEAS and (new) appserver" . The next day (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/gnue-public.log.11Sep2002) , Phil Cole (fil_c) "wonders if there's any place people would recommend to look at about the copyright issue... ... just been sent an assignment form, but I don't really have any background on it." Nick Rusnov (nickr) explained "generally assignment forms are to give copyright ownership in addition to you to another organization such as the FSFM" . Phil discovered an explanation ( http://www.fsf.org/licenses/why-assign.html) on the FSF web site. It was explained that the paperwork did not normally take long - minor patches would sometimes be accepted on the basis that author had agreed to give copyright assignment rather than wait for the full paperwork to be completed and returned. The intent was to protect the project, not to bog things down. 26. Installing GNUe on RedHat GNU/Linux 7.3 9 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 10 Sep 2002" People: Phil Cole, Jason Cater Phil Cole (fil_c) was "Just trying to follow through the install notes for redhat7.2, and update for 7.3 - ... downloaded from cvs, but seem to be missing objectserver/setup.py ... infact anything in objectserver ;( - is it dead?" Jason Cater (jcater) confirmed this - "you should be in appserver/ :)" Phil reported that he needed "new versions of wxPython and co for RedHat 7.3 :(" - he was getting "Python C API version mismatch" errors. It was noted that versions of wxPython were dependant on specific versions of wxwindows and python, but it was hoped that the RedHat distributions would have been consistant on this. Phil said he had got the dependancies working, and would e-mail these, along with an updated version of "the install guide for redhat 7.3." . It was noted that the various documents people had submitted about installing GNUe on different GNU/LInux distributions, or other platforms, needed to be in a single location on the website, under 'Quick Start Guides' or similar. 27. Typo bug in Designer 11 Sep 2002 (2 posts) Archive Link: "[Gnue-dev] Problem using Designer" Topics: Designer People: Stan Klein, Jason Cater Stan Klein reported problems "trying to use designer in a CVS-based installation" , and pasted his traceback error message. He was not getting the same problem on a machine with an older installation of GNUe. Jason Cater said "I fixed the typo in Designer's code that throws this exception. However, I think there's a problem in your setup that is triggering this. Is your gnue.conf file empty?" 28. DCL for GNUe project 10 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 11 Sep 2002" Topics: Forms People: Derek Neighbors, Peter Sullivan Further to Issue #45, Section #16 (3 Sep 2002: DCL for GNUe project) , Derek Neighbors (derek) said "i THINK dcl is now back and functioning for gnue" . The problem restoring the back up of the postgresql database it used had been that "it seems a pgdump dumps tab delimited data and takes no care to i18n - since we have lots of non americans here" he "had to hand manipulate the dump file (about 1.5 hours of work) to get it all to load" . Peter Sullivan (psu) reported that "my workorders all seem to be there Is it OK to start updating yet, or do you still have some tidying up to do?" Derek said "i think its ok - if you can browse your work orders a bit and make sure nothign looks grossly wrong i woudl feel better" . He "was starting to die w/o dcl - figured i woudl nut up and get it fixed tonight" . 29. XUL/Mozilla Forms client 10 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 11 Sep 2002" Topics: Forms People: Stuart Bain, Peter Sullivan, Jason Cater, Nick Rusnov Stuart Bain (stbain) suggested ironically "Hey... let's just drop this Python stuff and use XUL/Mozilla for all of the forms rendering" . Peter Sullivan (psu) noted that this had "been suggested ;-)" - including in Issue #3, Section #8 (12 Nov 2001: GNUe Forms and X-Forms W3C Standard) - "& it's in the FAQ as well" . Jason Cater (jcater) said he "would like to see a uidriver/XUL at some point - just to shut ppl up :)" . Nick Rusnov (nickr) suggested "put a stub for it in the cvs - that way, you can say 'yea, we have preliminary support ...'" Jason feared "but then we'll get the standard " I tried to run with XUL support, but it didn't work"" . Based on suggestions from Nick and Peter, he wondered about making a stub script that just printed "This module not yet complete.... We accept patches" . 30. Minor bugs in Forms 10 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 11 Sep 2002" Topics: Forms People: Marcos Dione, Jason Cater Marcos Dione (StyXman) reported a bug in Forms - "open a form that has several blocks - say 2 - now, click in the *frame* of one entry widget of the second block while the focus is in one widget of the first block - with this click, the cursor is changed to that widget, while the focus is in the other block's entry" . He noted "it does not even need to be entries from different blocks. it's a wx problem, I think..." Jason Cater (jcater) had "seen that bug before - but could've swore we resolved it" . Marcos said he would "try that on a new gnue. Another one: select some text (with the mouse) and pres . it gets unselected and only the char @ the left of the cursor gets deleted." 31. Multi-table datasources 10 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 11 Sep 2002" Topics: Common People: John Lenton It was asked about using UNIONs in postgresql with GNUe as an alternative to views. John Lenton (Chipaca), referring to Issue #35, Section #9 (24 Jun 2002: Multi-table Datasources) , said "there is a patch to make multi-table datasources - should be going in soon - it let us not use views :)" . 32. Debian packages for GNUe 10 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 11 Sep 2002" People: Jeff Bailey, Nick Rusnov, James Thompson, Daniel Baumann, Jason Cater Jeff Bailey (jbailey) was asked if he could help getting Debian GNU/Linux packages (.debs) done for GNUe. Jeff said he should be able to help, but was currently getting caught up, and "I'm now a co-maintainer for DEbian glibc." This was because of his work for GNU/Hurd, which depended heavily on glibc. Even so, Nick Rusnov (nickr) felt "thats like 'oh by the way I'm now the president of ex-soviet republic of georgia'" . Jeff said an important pre-requisite of him doing GNUe debs was to "try getting gnue to work one day. Y'know that I've still *never* gotten it installed, right? =)" It was suggested that, if they had help for the first run of Debian packages, the GNUe team could probably do most of the maintenance work themselves afterwards, as they were mainly Debian GNU/Linux users anyway. Nick, referring to his efforts in Issue #32, Section #7 (29 May 2002: Debian packages for GNUe and DCL) , said "Well if dist-utils wheren't so cockeyed they'd be done by now" Jeff agreed - "The limited python hacking I've done has all stayed nicely with automake. =)" Nick said "if they put files in sane places or at least in a way that could be easily specified on the command line without horking the 'install path' it'd be so easily" . Later, Jeff asked "So, are you looking for a mass conversion from distutils to the autotools finally? =)" It was explained that none of the core GNUe developers were keen on autotools either. James Thompson (jamest) felt that "dist utils? it sucks. It just sucked less that autoconf for python" . Jeff asked "What is it that you needed out of autotools that it failed at? Last time we spoke (like 18 months ago) you hadn't tried it at all." James said that "gnue used autoconf before distutils from the start - we rapidly switched to distutils at that time autoconf had no support for python beyond some 3rd party patches - at least that is what I recall" . Jeff noted that "automake has native support for python now" although "i've only used it for tiny projects, though. I had hoped you had tried it since then." Daniel Baumann (chillywilly) said that "I was adding auto* support then someone told me I better stop" . James found this hard to believe - "since when do you listen to what people tell you?" - asking "did you guys switch chilly's while I was away?" Daniel said "nope - I am a wiser chillywilly" . Daniel asked "why does distutils suck for debian packaging?" Jeff said "Because alot of things seem quite difficult to override" . He explained some of the steps involved in creating a Debian package, saying that "A package that's done properly with auto* and libtool and such takes me 2-4 hours to package now. (where by properly, I mean they actually implemented it *well* with those tools) (half the time I have to send patches upstream so that they're using the tools well)" . Later, Daniel told Jason Cater (jcater) "jbailey wants us to switch to auto* ;) " Jason retorted "yeah, and ppl in hell want icewater :)" Jeff felt that was a "Good analogy!" 33. Changes to GNUe website breaks CVS 10 Sep 2002 Archive Link: "[IRC] 11 Sep 2002" People: Phil Cole, Jason Cater Phil Cole (filc) asked "how do I create the gnue/www base directory as stated in the gnue/README.... or is this a misnomer?" Jason Cater (jcater) noted "um for some reason I think the www/ directory was moved last week - I didn't receive any notice but noticed that it was no longer valid" . He confirmed that "www was a hack by the gnu.org administrators to let us maintain our www page on their servers. I think they've made us consistent with the other projects, now." Phil said he would "send a patch in to remove it from the README" . 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 FlashMob Computing. Kernel Traffic is hosted by the generous folks at kernel.org. All pages on this site are copyright their original authors, and distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2.0.