GNUe Traffic #82 For 24�May�2003

Editor: Peter Sullivan

By Arturas Kriukovas �and� Peter Sullivan

Table Of Contents

• Printer-Friendly Format
• Text Format
• XML Source
• Introduction
• Threads Covered

  1.	15�May�2003		Debug version of GNUe Tools for Microsoft Windows
  2.	16�May�2003		Mailmerge using GNUe Reports
  3.	16�May�2003		Lines on page and merging tickets in DCL
  4.	17�May�2003		GNUe Small Business for sample *.gsd files
  5.	18�May�2003		Project papo using GNUe Tools
  6.	19�May�2003		GNUe *.rpms and official applications
  7.	19�May�2003		Documentation and dependencies for GNUe
  8.	19�May�2003		Preferred python driver for PostgreSQL
  9.	19�May�2003		Developing alternative user interface drivers for GNUe
  10.	20�May�2003		Multiple user interfaces for GNUe now supported on Microsoft Windows
  11.	20�May�2003		Database drivers for PostgreSQL in GNUe
  12.	20�May�2003		DCL and GNUe - partner projects
  13.	21�May�2003		Query techniques in GNUe Forms
  14.	21�May�2003		Connecting to databases with GNUe Tools

Introduction

1. Debug version of GNUe Tools for Microsoft Windows

15�May�2003�Archive Link: "[IRC] 15 May 2003"

Summary By Peter Sullivan

Topics: Forms, Navigator, Reports

People: Bajusz Tam�s,�Dmitry Sorokin,�ra3vat

A problem was reported trying to launch the GNUe Tools from the Windows 32 set up package. It was asked if there would be any logs of problems found. Bajusz Tam�s (btami) noted that there was a version of the GNUe Tools for Windows with python debugging switched on - he suggested downloading and installing this instead. He confirmed it was possible to run GNUe from the command line - "it has gnue-forms.exe in gnue-installed-dir\bin" . wxPython was not needed if the native Windows 32 user interface driver was used with Forms, but this did not apply to Navigator and Reports, which were still wxPython-only on Windows as of time of writig. Dmitry Sorokin (ra3vat) asked how "up to date cvs snapshots on the website" were. Tam�s said they "are hourly, i think - they are autogenerated" .

2. Mailmerge using GNUe Reports

16�May�2003�Archive Link: "[IRC] 16 May 2003"

Summary By Peter Sullivan

Topics: Reports

People: Jason Cater

It was asked whether there were any GNUe tools to create Microsoft Word documents. Jason Cater (jcater) siad "we have an RTF merge feature that I use a lot - you create a template-like RTF file in word, or openoffice, etc and reports can populate that file (adding a page for each record, if appropriate) - and return that rtf. It doesn't deal with native .DOC format though" . This should work on Microsoft Windows as well as GNU/Linux "as it's just a python-based setup" . This was part of the GNUe Reports tool, not Application Server - "there are examples in reports/samples, I think" . He explained "you create an RTF file using your word processor of choice. Wherever you'd like a field substituted, just denote it as ::field:: - e.g., you might have Dear ::firstname::," .

3. Lines on page and merging tickets in DCL

16�May�2003�Archive Link: "[IRC] 16 May 2003"

Summary By Peter Sullivan

Topics: DCL

People: Neil Tiffin,�Daniel Baumann,�Derek Neighbors

Neil Tiffin (neilt) asked about Double Chocco Latte, the work ticket/task logging system that was part of the GNUe project - "so what is the best way to figure out how DCL works so we can modify it? The docs seem a bit sparse :)" Daniel Baumann (chillywilly) suggested the "getting started guide" - "that's what I used" . Derek Neighbors (derek) said "there is a developers guide that is quite nice" .

Neil wanted to know how to "make the ticket list display more than 15 lines?" Derek said that, as a free software project, "the best way is to ask - as we have lots" of scheduled improvements, but were ameanable "to up the schedule of things planned" where there was specific user demand, or to accept submitted patches into the core product rather than force users "to 'customize'" . For Neil's specific problem, Derek noted that, where there were multiple pages of tickets, you could "click on any of the 'column headings' - it should 'sort' by that column heading AND make it all in one page. /me noticed this didnt work on 0.9.1 - but had been working on prior releases" . Neil noted "it does not work in 0.9.3 either" .

Neil also needed "a way to merge tickets together - is this planned" ? Derek said that the way he handled duplicate tickets was to close one of them, and in the "reason for closure" put a cross-reference to the other ticket in the format dcl://ticket/23423, which DCL would turn into a hyperlink to the other ticket. Neil said his problem was slightly different - "we have one email address for all issue reports - because the email addr gets routed to 7 or 8 people they reply - so we have many reponses to one issue" . Derek suggested setting up the e-mail gateway so that any e-mails sent to the gateway's e-mail address "gets a ticket made automagically - now 10 people can have 'watches' on that ticket - but if they respond to the ticket they should be logging to that ticket" . Neil thought this sounded useful, as "we are in transition, we have several management types that just want to respond to email and" not "get into the details of DCL" . Derek said he had similar issues with some of his end users - "and i am using an OLD version so can't use gateway just yet - so i can feel some of that pain" . He felt "the hardest part of something like dcl is getting people to use it - once you get them using it and fluent they scream bloody murder when you take it away" Neil hoped so, "we are only on Day 1 of using for production stuff" as of time of writing.

4. GNUe Small Business for sample *.gsd files

17�May�2003�Archive Link: "[IRC] 17 May 2003"

Summary By Peter Sullivan

Topics: Small Business, Common

People: John Lenton,�Dmitry Sorokin,�Mike Vincent,�Derek Neighbors,�ra3vat

John Lenton (Chipaca) asked "I'm looking for the gnue database schema definition language, where was that? was that ever finished? we've been using our own (non-xml) language, and it's got to the point where xml really would be simpler to read - I'd *love* a dtd :)" . Dmitry Sorokin (ra3vat) said he had "never seen dtd for that" but there were some sample *.gsd (GNUe Schema Defintion) files in the GNUe Small Business project's CVS. This had been "discussed and improved a lot by" Mike Vincent (Vee2d2) and Derek Neighbors (derek) "before derek .. was buried with real life - item management were discussed a lot, i'm not sure it got into cvs" - this was items in the sense of "product we sell and/or stock" rather than any computer-related meaning of "item."

5. Project papo using GNUe Tools

18�May�2003�Archive Link: "[IRC] 18 May 2003"

Summary By Peter Sullivan

People: John Lenton

John Lenton (Chipaca) confirmed that papo, "the application we developed with the gnue tools" , was being used in production. It was an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, but was "still only useful to small businesses, however." This was different to the GNUe small business sub-project, which papo pre-dated, and was "focused on argentina, for now; latinamerica in the next year" . It was open source, but the website and documentation was only in Spanish, even though "most of the dev is in english" .

6. GNUe *.rpms and official applications

19�May�2003�Archive Link: "[IRC] 19 May 2003"

Summary By Peter Sullivan

Topics: Financials (Accounting), Small Business

People: Dmitry Sorokin

It was asked whether the GNUe Tools were available in *.rpm (RedHat package management) format for GNU/Linux. Dmitry Sorokin (dimas) noted that at " http://home.attbi.com/~ejarvi/ there are rpm's for latest release" . However, "it is easy though to install from zip or tar.gz archive" . There were no official GNUe applications released yet (such as Financials or Inventory), but "you can look at savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnue-sbas most advanced sample" .

7. Documentation and dependencies for GNUe

19�May�2003�Archive Link: "[IRC] 19 May 2003"

Summary By Peter Sullivan

People: Dmitry Sorokin,�James Thompson

It was asked if there was a "getting started" type of document for GNUe. Dmitry Sorokin (dimas) pointed to the "guide for forms and common" at http://www.gnuenterprise.org/~jcater/docs/forms/ - "the same docs should be in the /doc for correspondent module if you download/install" .

Later, it was asked whether there was a definitive list of dependencies for all of the GNUe packages. James Thompson (jamest) said "our installers check for most dependencies" .

8. Preferred python driver for PostgreSQL

19�May�2003�Archive Link: "[IRC] 19 May 2003"

Summary By Peter Sullivan

Topics: Common

People: Jason Cater

For the recommended database driver, to allow the python that GNUe was written in to talk to the postgresql database, Jason Cater (jcater) said he personally used pypgsql as of time of writing - he had used psycopg "for a long time, but recently ran into an issue with it - I forget exactly what the issue was - might have been date/time support" .

9. Developing alternative user interface drivers for GNUe

19�May�2003�Archive Link: "[IRC] 19 May 2003"

Summary By Peter Sullivan

Topics: Common

People: Jan Ischebeck,�Jason Cater,�James Thompson

Jan Ischebeck (siesel) had "a short gui question - do you think its better to put the whole form + notebook tabs into a scrollable area, or to have a scrollable area for each page?" Jason Cater (jcater) "would think the latter" . Jan agreed - he was doing the GTK2 user interface driver this way, in which case the (original) wxPython user interface driver should really be changed to match. He also asked to what extent "should we replace native gui functions (selection/cut paste) by gnue framework specific implementations?" Jason felt "only as much as necessary - but that turns out to be a good bit" . Jan agreed - "yeah, its quite difficult to veto a focus request" .

Later, James Thompson (jamest) asked Jan "you working on gtk?" Jan replied "yes - menu and toolbar + key press events are working great, there are still some focus issues and the code for text size computation is missing" , but otherwise he was making good progress.

10. Multiple user interfaces for GNUe now supported on Microsoft Windows

20�May�2003�Archive Link: "[IRC] 20 May 2003"

Summary By Arturas Kriukovas

Topics: Common, Forms

People: Bajusz Tam�s,�Derek Neighbors

Bajusz Tam�s (btami) said he had "4 forms client running same time (gtk2,win32,qt,wx) on my XP box" with the same forms file. The screenshot was available at: http://www.gnuenterprise.org/~btami/forms-clients-on-XP.PNG.

Later, Derek Neighbors (derek) noticed that the screenshot was "great for 'demos'" - "1 form - 4 toolkits - 2 operating systems" - "GNUe the anti-lock-in remedy."

11. Database drivers for PostgreSQL in GNUe

20�May�2003�Archive Link: "[IRC] 20 May 2003"

Summary By Arturas Kriukovas

Topics: Common

People: Dmitry Sorokin,�James Thompson,�ra3vat

Dmitry Sorokin (ra3vat) said he had "faced the same problem with psycopg and timestamps you warned before" . Dmitry was interested whether it was possible to "omit referencing timestamp fields in update operator" . James Thompson (jamest) said he had solved the problem by changing db driver (to popy). He had "not dug into it at all to see if it's an issue on our end of psycopg" , though he didn't "recall anything in our psycopg driver that would cause this" . Dmitry said that installing popy solved his problem too.

12. DCL and GNUe - partner projects

20�May�2003�Archive Link: "[IRC] 20 May 2003"

Summary By Arturas Kriukovas

Topics: DCL

People: Jason Cater

It was asked whether DCL was just a partner of the the gnuenterprise system, or whether it was fully integrated. Jason Cater (jcater) explained that "right now we are more partner projects than anything. DCL is under the GNUe banner, but is its own code base and doesn't use GNUe tools, though some have used GNUe to do custom reports/forms for DCL iirc" .

13. Query techniques in GNUe Forms

21�May�2003�Archive Link: "[IRC] 21 May 2003"

Summary By Peter Sullivan

Topics: Forms

People: Derek Neighbors

It was asked how to do Query By Example in GNUe. Derek Neighbors (derek) said "currently we do what we call 'in-line' queries" , where users could "click 'prepare query' button" and enter what data they knew, using SQL wildcards like % and ?. "we also have 'sloppy query' modes - so you wouldnt need to type the %. We plan on making 'filter' widgets - which i forsee as having QBE type wizard to narrow down record sets. Also i could see the in-line query methodolgy getting more robust - so power users could do some neat tricks" .

14. Connecting to databases with GNUe Tools

21�May�2003�Archive Link: "[IRC] 21 May 2003"

Summary By Arturas Kriukovas

Topics: Common

People: Derek Neighbors

It was asked why it was impossible to connect to a DB from Windows (although the same ODBC connection was accessable in OpenOfice 1.0). Derek Neighbors (derek) suspected the problems were due to one or more of :

1. connections.conf is setup incorrectly or not being pointed to properly by the installer.
2. the needed driver was not included to install by the installer.
3. there is some problem with database not accepting connections (invalid permissions, not listening on tcp/ip ports, firewall/routing issues).

There were no errors being reported by GNUe while trying to make a connection - it was suggested that using the alternative version of the Windows executable with python debugging turned on might produce some helpful error messages.

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