On 2007-09-22, Mark Eichin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> urwid, perhaps?  (It's for python, not C, but it's a string-language
> configurator you're talking about...)

Looks like a widget library to me. Widgets are so low-level. I can't
believe people like getting their hands working with such poor an
abstraction. 

What I'm after is something that doesn't talk about widgets at all, but
takes a description of the configuration, and generates an UI from it. 
A bit like Vis [1], but far more limited.  It would just take a description
of the structure of the program's configuration (a bit like a DTD, but in 
a far more readable format and along with documentation, etc.), and create
an UI for modifying a configuration file matching that description. It
wouldn't have to be as smart as Vis about generating the UI, as it could
just use the hierarchy present in the description to generate e.g. good
old DOS setup.com-style interface.

Actually, come to think of it, the kernel does have something like this,
but mostly working on simple booleans (and the petatonne monolith having
outgrown this, or any, configuration system). Tthe console version of the
UI (menuconfig) also seems to be using termios directly, instead of 
curses, or even a higher-level library on top of curses. *sigh*. (Oh,
well, typical of the FOSS herd -- originality forbidden -- to waste 
time writing clone software for childish reasons, instead of doing 
something entirely new.)


  [1]: http://iki.fi/tuomov/vis/

-- 
Tuomo

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