KubuntuHWDB

Revision 8 as of 2006-06-22 16:48:27

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Summary

Allow Kubuntu to have a HWDB frontend.

Rationale

HWDB is a handy tool for taking information on users hardware, we should have a client for it in Kubuntu. The current client is GTK only and therefor unsuitable for default install in Kubuntu.

Use cases

Oliver wants to report a hardware support bug in Kubuntu but want to include a HWDB reference to have the maximum information available to the bug readers.

Daniel wants to help Kubuntu and Ubuntu build up information on which hardware is supported but as a Kubuntu user is unable to without installing the GTK frontend and the large number of dependencies it requires.

Scope

Converting GTK parts of the existing code in the hwdb-client package into KDE. The questions and hardware data collection will be shared between the two frontends.

Design

Two Python files, hwdb-gui and hwdb-send, need to be ported from GTK to KDE.

Implementation

Jonathan half started this a while ago, code at http://kubuntu.org/~jriddell/hwdb/

HWDB consists of a number of questions for the user ("does sound work", "does your keyboard work", etc). Finishing this code needs writing the GUI and related functionality for each question. Most of the questions fall into a common case of "Yes, No, Partially" so most questions do not need specific code. The questions are available in a frontend-independent XML file. The audio question will need to use arts instead of esd to be compatible with KDE.

Changes planned for hwdb-client in edgy should be included in the KDE frontend, these will be adding a Back button to the wizard and an option to rerun the client in the case of a user installing new hardware. Further questions may be added as specified at ExtendHwdb, these will be easy to incorporate as they do not include

The hwdb package will be split into three packages hwdb-client-common, hwdb-client-gnome and hwdb-client-kde which provide the common file and those for each frontend.

Outstanding issues

KDE lacks a good canvas class along the lines of gnome-canvas as used in the GTK frontend so will likely end up with less graphics. If Python bindings for Qt 4 are packaged and working we can write it in Qt 4 which will allow for the same graphics as used in the GTK frontend.

Further questions and functionality may be added as part of https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/extend-hw-db/

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