GUI Handling of Modules

From: Maj Justin Seiferth <seiferth(at)erols.com>
Date: Tue Jul 01 1997 - 18:37:42 EDT

In putting together the prototype Java interface for Apache I'm having some trouble coming up with a nice metaphor/system for handling modules. Here are the problems I see:

• you don't know definitively from the configuration files what modules are compiled in (there may not be any tell-tale directives in the config files) so you'll have to either parse and use the server footprint spewed out by one of the server directives or force the administrators to manually enter some sort of info on the modules for

the configuration server to use.

• once the configuration server is "module aware" you'll still need to modify the user interface to enable/disable the configuration of certain modules. This implies a setup protocol and the hiding/display of some dialoges based on the protocol.
• finally, what's the best way to develop the configuration screens for the modules- parse the server footprint and dynamically generate the configuration dialogues based on that information, use some sort of preconfigured data for dynamically generating the configuration dialoges or just develop custom setup dialogues for all the modules and then just display/hide them as appropriate.

What are your thoughts?

Justin
seiferth@erols.com Received on Tue Jul 1 12:35:24 1997