-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Kristian
Kielhofner
Sent: Friday, 20 October 2006 6:25 AM
To: Discussion of AstLinux - Asterisk on Compact Flash
Subject: Re: [Astlinux-users] Phone provisioning
Paul Davidson wrote:
>
> I agree- plists would be a nice match. My concern, especially in the
> case of something like astlinux, but in general, is the use of scripts
> to 'bring older configs up to date'. I don't wanna- I want the system
> to use what's there, let me make arbitrary changes directly to the
> configuration files, and still be able to deal with it. I know, it's a
> picky, lofty goal- perhaps even impossible. But I look at it as- I can
> represent the same dialplan 10 different ways or more, and Asterisk
> interprets it correctly, every time- so why can't a configuration tool?
> I see it as a perfect fit for astlinux, as it's use is more aimed at
> small environments, with beginning administrators, or no administrator
> at all. Someone who installs asterisk in an environment like that
> needs a simple interface, but may grow into more advanced development-
> and the last thing I would recommend to them is to lock themselves in
> to a particular configuration tool, or style.
>
> I will keep my eye on it, and I'll also burn some brain power as to how
> I might get my evil, er, stated goals accomplished. At some point, I
> may put together a collection of some of the more bizarre Asterisk
> configs, so I can feed them into a parser and see what jumps out.
>
> -pbd
>
pbd,
I like your style. FreePBX (or whatever they are calling that GUI) has
some major problems that keep it out of AstLinux:
1) HUGE software dependencies. Why do you need MySQL, perl, etc, etc
for a simple web interface?
2) Inflexibility. They also force a given style of configuration on
you. If you are not able to accomplish your Asterisk goals within that
framework, too bad. You're out of luck and you're back to editing
config files by hand. Unfortunately, now you are editing HORRIBLE
config files that are so abstracted you're better off starting from
scratch...
I really like how you are approaching this. Let me know if you need
anything, anything at all.
--
Kristian Kielhofner
_______________________________________________
How about a million dollars and a 400 hour work week?
Seriously, this will take a bunch of time, and no doubt I'll be peppering the list with questions from time to time. Suggestions on UI, odd features that would help (like plists, for example), are always welcome. If there's someone out there who wants to work with me on it, and has a solid PHP background, that would also help- especially someone who likes coding UIs in PHP. I'm more of the server-side person, and have no problems handling the various ugly file manipulations- once I publish the voicemail stuff, you'll all see that. I've already got a few of the more tricky bits in the can- a basic manager API interface, database manipulation (not useful here, but possibly as an add-on), language translation and security modules.. I just have to figure out how I can turn the parser for the 4 or 5 'key' asterisk conf files into solid PHP so that the conf files can be rewritten without more than basic modifications. I avoid pear and other such modules for the most part, which makes my code a little heavier, but much more easily customized. If there's a php person out there reading this who shares this somewhat warped philosophy, drop me a note offlist.
-pbd
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