Re: On Akka Development

["Chahine M. HAMILA" <mch at chaham dot com>]

Sorry not to have answered you before Mohamed, I just have been disconnected
these 3 last days.
Just give me the week-end and I'll consider all the details (please keep in
mind that I know nothing of python). In the meanwhile, I will try to answer
to answer some of the questions:

- I don't know what's the problem with ltmain.sh, but if I understand things
correctly, it's more likely to be related to the autotools (either the ones
with Akka or the ones with redhat - check M. Elzubeir he's the one who made
them).

- Can you give more precise examples of what behavior is erratic? It's
probably a configuration problem... Check for example a sample perl
configuration in
http://cvs.arabeyes.org/viewcvs/projects/akka/conf/sampleconf.pl?rev=1.3&con
tent-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup
Note that processing a glyph file for example is done on the client side (a
perl function was provided for it - load_glyph_file as a demo and a helper).

- As for the configuration style, I invite you again to check the sample
configuration file above, it practically looks the same as any normal conf
file you'd find in /etc. So writing a python program is probably a correct
approach, even though an abstraction mechanism should definitely hide the
details of all the corba calls etc (e.g. make a python library you can
include at the head of your config file which would make its writing
straight, again, I invite you to see the perl sample conf above). Ideally of
course, we would have a [n]curses interface with a configuration panel that
generates such configuration files and which can control Akka's behavior,
but that's more than what we can dream of for now;)

- you should make a difference between bidi approximation (set with
setBidiApproximation) and rtl (set with setDirection). Your initial
configuration file/script is the one that sets the behavior of Akka on each
console, since by default, when you start up the Akka server, no console is
taken over if memory serves (sorry I can't test it for now I have no Linux
box under hand).

- Akka's support of utf8 consoles is broken (as is Acon's, from which it is
inherited and unchanged IIRC) for a simple reason: I have never succeeded in
having a working utf8 Linux text console and don't know anyone who did... If
you think you can do it, I can help you get started with the server's code.

- Akka has been designed with little security issues in mind. That doesn't
mean there are security holes, there aren't any AFAIK in that sense that to
mess up your machine you need to be root anyway, but if you want a client
that could interact with Akka without having root priviledges (which would
be a very reasonable and useful behavior on condition that the priviledges
could be configurable), then I guess some further programming must be done.

There, if you have any further inquiry I am entirely at your disposal,
Salaam,
Chahine