Re: 0.15.1 released. -- LINUX5250

On Tue, Nov 16, 1999 at 11:01:29PM -0700, James David Rich wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Nov 1999, Jason M. Felice wrote:
> 
> > - Debating whether to pull in James David Rich's dds2curses utility and hack
> >   it to work with lib5250 instead.  (To James: I certainly want to put that
> >   in the CLUG CVS server, in any case, did I already ask you that?)
> 
> That's fine with me.  But wait until I have a chance to make a few small 
> changes.  I'll try to send it to you by the end of the week.

Cool.

> 
> I'm wondering about using lib5250.  dds2curses isn't necessarily related 
> to tn5250.  Making dds2curses use lib5250 (which I think is a good idea) 
> would mean that dds2curses would become tied to tn5250.  I wonder if 
> people would want just tn5250 or just dds2curses.  Right now neither one 
> is extrememly large (dds2curses is miniscule), but tn5250 with gnome
> front 
> end could become large.  I wonder if folks would want them in seperate 
> packages?  Would it be a good idea to split lib5250 from tn5250 at some 
> point?  Now is probably not the time, but like gtk and gimp it may be a 
> good idea in the future.

My thoughts, in random order (I haven't had my coffee yet ;):
1) Splitting tn5250 from lib5250 is not worthwhile.  tn5250 itself is a
   really small program (one source file) which uses the library for all of
   it's work.  I pretty much view the current tn5250 as just a 'demonstration'
   of the lib5250 functionality -- and I think that will be furthered when
   people are using Gnome and/or KDE emulators.
2) On the other hand, keeping Gnome/KDE support in seperate packages, but
   requiring lib5250 to be installed first is not unreasonable.  I expect these
   front-ends to get _much_ bigger than the current tn5250 (curses-based)
   front-end, as it would be useful to implement some desktop integration
   features into both.  It's probably best to keep them in the
   seperate packages the more I think about it - I was just planning to have
   configure check for Gnome libs and KDE libs and conditionally compile
   the front ends.
3) I don't think it's that big of a deal to install the tn5250 package if
   required by dds2curses (which, of course, would then probably be renamed
   dds2c or something); in any case, it would be much more functional as
   it would have full keyboard support.  The alternative would be to implement
   (and maintain) both lib5250 and straight curses code generation support,
   which is not *my* cup of tea.  (hint, hint).  Of course, you da' boss.
4) I plan to use dds2curses, either the official version or my hacked version
   with my RPG compiler for DDS support, and this will be with lib5250
   support.  (Wait, I can do that, it is GPLed or BSDed or something, right?)
5) As I expect dds2curses to remain relatively small, and if it were to
   generate _only_ code based on lib5250, I think it should be included in
   the tn5250 package (as long as it remains a small utility) to avoid
   version inconsistencies, but this has the drawback that people won't think
   "I need a DDS utility, let's look at the Linux 5250 package."  Hmm...

Questions, comments, flames?  Especially from James?
-Jay 'Eraserhead' Felice
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