Decisions

From Woofgui

Contents

Info about decisions

HowTo discuss our decisions:

  • description
  • priority (high, medium, low; becomes useful when we have a lot of ideas for features which are not all equally necessary for woofgui to run properly or for our project to get started with the right tools)
  • present handling
  • suggestions / alternatives
  • grounds
  • decision (keep this short, like: name votes for option.)



General

Usability

Gui-application or filemanager-script?

Description: Do we want an independant gui-app or are we happy with one python-script and a filemanager-script?

Priority: high

Present handling: nautilus-/konqueror-script.


  • This is become redundant! Woof can be a launchable GUI-app with file-selection dialogue, notifications-bubbles, launchscripts for nautilus, konqueror, dolphin etc + console-functionality!



URL-providing

Description: How does woofgui provide user with urls; how can user copy-paste?

Present handling: copy to clipboard when 'ok' is pressed.

Priority: high


Options:

  • use clipboard
  • grab-button which stores url in clipboard
  • (very advanced) offer buttons which open new mail with urls in message or which open chatmessage to selected buddy (like gnome-do plugin). These should be alternatives to the 'ok' button, because woof has to run in order to generate urls.
  • systray-icon with notification-bubble with urls, can be repeated by clicking
  • embedded shell-output


Grounds:

  • pro clipboard: less clicking, no extra window
  • pro clipboard: user selecting and copying with his mouse can go wrong, e.g. missing first or last characters. Also typing from bubble can cause mistakes.
  • contra clipboard: people may not like messing with their clipboard

Decision

  • button with option copy-to-clipboard on main window and also systray-icon with bubble: Martin

Message what ip-adress connected

Description: How do we handle this?

Priority: low

Present handling: none


Options:

  • no message;
  • extra popup windows;
  • (very advanced) maybe it is possible to create window which shows shell output (like ubuntu update-manager window).
  • notifications-bubble


Grounds:

  • Not very important because connecting ip-adres will most of the times be unknown, unless outside lan when inside was expected.
  • pro notif-bubble: no annoying popup windows that must be clicked away, and user is notified nonetheless.

Decision:

  • bubble with short time-out: Martin

Post-launch cancelling

Description: Offering a cancel-option after woofgui is launched.

Priority: medium

Present handling; none


Options;

  • Extra window with message "[ip-adress] connected" and 'cancel'-option.
  • Notification-bubble with 'cancel´ button (we'll need a distro-independant method then, since jaunty won't support buttons; does pynotify do the trick?)
  • Gui-app minimizes to traybar; notification-bubble with connecting ip-adress; cancel-button on gui-app
  • In gui-app embedded terminal-output; cancel-button.


Grounds:

  • Pro: We should offer cancel-option also after woof has started, e.g. when connecting ip-adress is not the intended receiver and / or not trusted.
  • Contra: Problem: this would require an extra window, since the new notification handling in Jaunty deliberately does not support actions like buttons. We could maybe use an alert box (https://wiki.edubuntu.org/NotificationDesignGuidelines).
  • contra embedded terminal-output: will not be read when minimized

Programming

Python-update

Description: updating python-script; woof has been written some time ago now.

Priority: medium (building upon buggy code is unwise)


Options:

  • We should check what has changed in python since woof was written; what commands are deprecated etc. We could get an advanced Python god/dess to have a quick flyover through the existing code & make remarks as to what needs to be changed - We then document it, research it & fix it one step at a time.
  • Also, Python 3.0 has been released which changes a lot of things. Right now, Python 2.6 ist still widespread, but 3.0 will become the standard sooner or later. We will have to update the code for this someday!


Decision:

Encryption

Description: A killer-feature for our software would be if the HTTP-connection could be SSL-encrypted. There's a python-library out there doing the heavy-lifting: [1]. What we need to find out is how much trouble it is for the user to get a SSL-certificate to use. Can we just generate one on the fly, let it be unsigned by official organizations and still get good encryption without hassle?

Priority: low


Options:

  • Pro SSL
  • Contra SSL
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