GNUe Traffic #87 For 28�Jun�2003

Editor: Peter Sullivan

By Peter Sullivan

Table Of Contents

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

  1.	19�Jun�2003		Problems with internationalisation (i18n) in GNUe
  2.	19�Jun�2003		GNUe Point of Sale (POS)
  3.	19�Jun�2003		Application server and instant messaging
  4.	20�Jun�2003	(1 post)	CVS restructuring
  5.	21�Jun�2003		Plans for 0.5.1 release
  6.	22�Jun�2003		Blocks and pop-ups in Forms

Introduction

1. Problems with internationalisation (i18n) in GNUe

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

Summary By Peter Sullivan

People: Dmitry Sorokin,�Arturas Kriukovas,�ra3vat

Dmitry Sorokin (ra3vat) was "still having i18n startup issue - fresh install by my friend under debian yesterday and no work until LANG=C was set" . Arturas Kriukovas (Arturas) asked "if there was no env parameter set up - how it would be possible to determine language" , asking whether "your friend was unable to run forms at all - or he didn't get i18n text?" Dmitry said "i think it was not work with LANG=koi8-r with unicode error" .

2. GNUe Point of Sale (POS)

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

Summary By Peter Sullivan

Topics: Small Business, Designer

People: Jason Cater,�Sacha Schlegel

Further to Issue�#45, Section�#9� (30�Aug�2002:�Point of Sale (POS) systems for GNUe) , Jason Cater (jcater) posted a screenshot of a Point of Sales (POS) system he was writing with the GNUe Tools. He noted "everything is dynamic - the subtotal fields at the bottom - the columns displayed, etc. also, my program doesn't define it's own dat\abase schema - it expects an inventory/financial system to already be in place (like GNUe SB, etc) - /me figured it would be a lot more flexible that way" .

Earlier, Sacha Schlegel (SachaS) asked "arent there books who tell you how to, for example, do a international POS - or inventory or human resources etc" . Jason was not aware of any - he had written this POS just based on his (fairly extensive) experience. Sacha said he was thinking of something like "scheer - a german professor, has a company called scheer-something and SAP based "some" business logic (eg database tables) on those inputs" .

Later, Sacha asked "do you write your forms by hand or do you use "your" designer :) ?" Jason confessed "to date, mostly by hand - but all the recent changes in cvs" for Designer "are because I've promised myself I will "take my own medicine" (i.e., use designer exclusively for my new forms)" .

3. Application server and instant messaging

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

Summary By Peter Sullivan

Topics: Application Server

People: Reinhard M�ller

Someone asked if anyone working on Application Server had looked at using XMPP, to allow AppServer to send alert messages to users on Jabber or other IM (instant messaging) systems - this could be useful for flagging things like overdue orders that needed notifying to a sales rep. Reinhard M�ller (reinhard) said he personally "would prefer a email sent in a cron job or something like that" but "it will be possible to use python triggers/procedures in appserver, so you could add that feature yourself" . It was suggested that this could also be useful for escalating business rule exceptions like a salesperson trying to order a discontinued item, in which case the Sales Supervisor could be notified.

4. CVS restructuring

20�Jun�2003 (1 post) Archive Link: "[GNUe-dev] Restructuring of CVS"

Summary By Peter Sullivan

People: Jason Cater

Jason Cater announced that GNUe had "reorganized our CVS directory into modules. No longer will we have a single cvs checkout composed of all our tools. Each tool will have to be checked out individually." He gave the updated instructions for accessing CVS, which were also on the website.

5. Plans for 0.5.1 release

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

Summary By Peter Sullivan

Topics: Designer

People: Jason Cater,�James Thompson

Jason Cater (jcater) suggested "if you are testing to see what gnue does you might want to grab cvs" . James Thompson (jamest) said that CVS had moved on quite a bit from the last (0.5.0) release - "i think forms has seen more UI drivers working - designer has come a long way" . Jason added that the CVS version was "at least as stable as 0.5.0 esp. the client tools (forms, reports, etc) - as most of the commits for those tools in cvs have been either bug fixes or new UI drivers" . James felt "we need to do a release. what are pending issues?" Jason said "In forms, common, etc, I'm not aware of any" . Later, he recalled that "I'm still occasionally getting that FieldInspectorPanel traceback (though can't reliably repeat it, so am having hard time debugging)" and there were a few other minor bugs. He suggested "probably 3 or so days of good coding sessions and I'll be ok with a designer release - but it'll be interesting to find those 3 days :)" .

6. Blocks and pop-ups in Forms

22�Jun�2003�Archive Link: "[IRC] 22 Jun 2003"

Summary By Peter Sullivan

Topics: Forms

People: Derek Neighbors

Derek Neighbors (derek) explained what a block was - "A datasource provides a link to a table, but Forms needs more information than a simple reference to meaningfully interface with an end user. A block is the first step to making datasources suitable for such user interaction. At its most basic level, a block contains instructions on how Forms should interact with a datasource. Any datasources that are to interact with a user must have a single corresponding block. Datasources that are only used internally and not for displaying data will not normally have an associated block, although the developer may choose to do so. Blocks are the display equivalent of datasources" .

It was asked how to do a master/detail form, with the top half containing details of the master record, and the bottom part of the form displaying a grid of the detail records. Also, clicking on a detail record would "pop-up" another form with further information of that detail record. Derek said that the first part of this could be done "with no code using master/detail w/in forms. To do the 'pop-up' you would have to do some code - you would have to get the 'id' (key) of the grid form record and pass that to the popped up form" .

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