GNUe Traffic #80 For 10 May 2003 Editor: Peter Sullivan By Peter Sullivan Table Of Contents * Standard Format * Text Format * XML Source * Introduction * Threads Covered 1. 1 May 2003 Producing Debian packages from CVS 2. 2 May 2003 - 6 May 2003 Native User Interface for Microsoft Windows 3. 6 May 2003 Dialogue boxes in Forms Introduction This covers the three main mailing lists for the GNU Enterprise (http:// www.gnuenterprise.org) project, plus the #gnuenterprise IRC channel. 1. Producing Debian packages from CVS 1 May 2003 Archive Link: "[IRC] 01 May 2003" Summary By Peter Sullivan Topics: Application Server People: Jason Cater, Umeboshi, Jeff Bailey, James Thompson Umeboshi (umeboshi) asked about producing Debian packages for GNUe from the CVS code. Jason Cater (jcater) said that Jeff Bailey (jbailey) "does our debs" but the code for his packaging was not in CVS. However, "we haven't done too much since the last release - which has .debs" , but "those are for unstable - we don't have recent ones for woody" , the Debian stable distribution as of time of writing. Umeboshi said that he had "been doing work along similiar lines - but i'd rather ditch most of what i've done - and learn the gnue system and port some of my stuff to it. All of my work prevoiusly has been in python, pygtk, pypgsql, mxtools, kjbuckets - kjbucktets has a nice graph object which has worked well for me" . He explained "it is sets and graphs for python" . His code had been used by a high-volume eBay reseller. James Thompson (jamest) said that Jason had made some Debian packages for woody previously. Jason said that the files for this were in CVS in "is in packaging/ debian/" . Umeboshi said that "the biggest problem with woody i see is pygtk" - this key dependancy for the current GNUe code would need "to be backpoted too" . He asked "have you heard of pyro (http://pyro.sourceforge.net) - python remote objects? it's pure python, and it allows you to distribute python objects across networks. it's pretty neat, but it can't distribute c modules only pure python" . He wondered "do you use the appserver in gnue similiarly to distribute objects to wxwin clients?" 2. Native User Interface for Microsoft Windows 2 May 2003 - 6 May 2003 Archive Link: "[IRC] 02 May 2003" Summary By Peter Sullivan Topics: Forms, Common People: Dmitry Sorokin, James Thompson, Bajusz Tam?s, Jason Cater, ra3vat Dmitry Sorokin (ra3vat) asked "are tabs working under win32" when using the wx driver. James Thompson (jamest) said "they were at one time" but noted that Bajusz Tam?s (btami) had the native "win32 driver functoinal in cvs - and claims it's better than the wx driver" . Dmitry noted "with wx driver i have problem with tabs and i18n" . Some days later (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/ gnue-public.log.05May2003) , Dmitry said he had tested the native Win32 Forms driver - he had got a login screen but "was not ablr to load a real form" . Tam?s made some changes, which fixed this. He asked Dmitry (and anyone else) to "please test it with your (home made) forms in general, if have a little time" . Dmitry wondered if his initial problems were because "i use custom authentication with postgres" . Tam?s said he had "tested with netrc on firebird only" . Dmitry reported "now it is complaining about: No module named ImageWin" . Tam?s said it "needs Pil for support" . Bajusz warned "calculating widgetWidth/widgetHeight" was not perfect yet, but he had worked around this by "using pointSize = 18 in my gnue.conf" and using Courier as a fixed width font. He believed that "the win32 driver has the same "entry width not accurate" bug as wx has" . The next day (http://www.gnuenterprise.org/irc-logs/gnue-public.log.06May2003) , Dmitry confirmed "it was much better with last setting you suggested" - "now it looks the same as undex linux (wx driver)" . He reported "search buttons (they call simpleQuery) work - one that activate dialog does not" . Tam?s said "this is true on linux too - dialogs are not perfect yet" . He was not happy with the way dialogs were handled "now the form reads/builds all dialogs when it starts" - "but what if i have about 100 dialogs in my program" - "i never want to load all dialogs when i start 1 form" . Dmitry suggested that "standart dialogs shows how to do that" in another way - this could just "be extended for user defined dialogs - or are they load at start time anyway?" Tam?s thought this was the case. Tam?s said he had been converting an application to GNUe, but had stopped because of the frustrations of using the wx driver on Microsoft Windows, and put his effort into writing the native Win32 driver instead. Dmitry asked "does win32gui module free from all wx limits you faced?" Tam?s thought so - "it needs more work (when coding), because i use win32 API, not MFC - but this gives full control in event handling - and eliminates a plus abstraction layer. I think the forms (in general) ready to start reimplement my app, the main problem is reports. I desperately need a wisual designer - nearly all my reports changes from year2year" . Later, Dmitry confirmed that the "win32 driver works quite well" . Jason Cater (jcater) thought "that deserves a release" . James Thompson (jamest) said that he might be able to find time to do a release that weekend - from his side, he needed "to eliminate some strange warnings/errors, and also need to get the best way to separate the different UIs." 3. Dialogue boxes in Forms 6 May 2003 Archive Link: "[IRC] 06 May 2003" Summary By Peter Sullivan Topics: Forms People: Dmitry Sorokin, James Thompson, ra3vat Dmitry Sorokin (ra3vat) asked whether "more than one embedded dialog is not supported?" James Thompson (jamest) said "the about/jumpto/error messages are all embedded dialogs now - each must have a unique name" . One of the sample files demonstrated this. Dmitry said that this did not seem to be working - "each time i add two dialog definitions i'm getting empty frame" , even giving them different names. James said he would have to look at this. Dmitry asked "what about standart dialog technique? i'd like to define my own dialogs and put them somewhere close to where my forms placed - without additional python module to each" . James said "you can add dialogs in the dialogs directory in forms - but each need a wrapper class - or I believe you could put them in a forms library and import them" . Dmitry asked "would it be useful to have separate directory for user defined dialogs?" . James said it would not "take much to add - but I'm not sure if it confuses the issue if we've already got import support w/ form libraries" . He was worried that there would be "too many places to do the same thing - in the forms itself, in a user defined forms library, in a special directory just for user forms." Dmitry asked "then what is the user defined forms library, may be i'm missing important feature?" James explained "you can setup .gfd files and use them like .so files in a way - you can import blocks are such from them" . 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. 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