Re: SEUL: SEUL duplicating efforts?

[Donovan Rebbechi <elflord@pegasus.rutgers.edu>]

On Fri, 13 Feb 1998, David Freeman wrote:

> I just downloaded and installed KDE beta 3.  Very, very nice.  Gnome is
> also progressing very rapidly.  SEUL does not need to work on desktop
> environments, in my opinion.

strongly agree. 

> Any  admin/setup tools we write should be modules for existing systems,
> whether they be KDE/GNOME/Linuxconf.

KDE is nice, but (as every-one knows) not quite free (free, but not
"freed")
 
> What we really need to work on is an _easy_, automated X setup.
 
X-Configuration is
by a mile the hardest part of setting up linux. There's numerous traps:
serial mice don't get setup properly on RH 5, problems with
sub-optimal video performance (required me to write a modeline) , problems
with applications opening in windows bigger than the screen (even on
800x600 display) ... 

Also, the Xauthority thing is a big annoyance to any newbie who's tried to
run a Tcl/Tk mail client under X (exmh gives lots of nasty error 
messages). 

Some heavy-duty improvements to the startx script wouldn't go
astray. What would be really nice is a program that generates an
'xstartup' script or something of the sort. Just some program that invites
you to do some options (Xauthority, default color depth , config file etc)
and spits out a script.

Other hardware that is problematic includes (non) automated modem
configuration, and sound card setup  (even sndconfig from RH5 doesn't
detect the hardware, you need to tell it the IRQ/DMA ... ) 

> Also automate common user actions, using gnurus (wizards).  Write
> newbie-oriented tutorials and help files.

I would be happy to offer assistance on writing docs (though my knowledge
is a
little limited).  

I posted to a newsgroup raising this kind of issue a while ago. The
possibilities include a "help" button and a "HELP" command which fires up
some kind of browser (perhaps even lynx). It would be nice if the HOWTOs
were connected to the help system. As a newbie, I found the HOWTOs were my
life saver, and these plus the LDP docs (such as installation guide) were
my main source of documentation. A simple command to put a browser on the
HOWTOs/LDP docs would already be a handy thing (and very easy to do ...
the script goes something like 'lynx /usr/doc/HTML/index.html' ... ) 

> But I don't think that trying to duplicate the effort of other projects
> is very productive.

In fact it's precisely what the linux community should step away from ... 

-- Donovan