Le 03/05/2016 20:03, Steve Litt a écrit :
On Tue, 3 May 2016 11:53:33 +0200
Didier Kryn <k...@in2p3.fr> wrote:
Yes, I know. All these front-ends use wpa_supplicant in their
kitchen. I just wonder why they find it more clever to re-do on their
own what wpa_supplicant can do alone.
I think I can answer that.
Wpa_supplicant has three front ends that I know of: wpa_cli, wpa_gui,
and wpa_passphrase. Wpa_passphrase' capability is limited to taking an
SSID and password and making something that can be appended
to /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf in order to interact with
that SSID.
Wpa_gui, and *especially* wpa_cli, are structured so the human must
give information in wpa_supplicant API terms, rather than in human
terms. Wpa_gui does one of the worst jobs of human engineering of any
software I've seen.
The ideal interface would be an nCurses thing that is structured pretty
much like Network Manager. Network Manager got the human engineering
almost completely right. Too bad about all the dbus and X requirements.
Steve, I don't understand a bit of what all these psk and other
crypting and authentication mechanisms are. This is why I like wpa_gui:
it fills all fields for you, only leaving empty the
password/passphrase/what-the-fuck-key you need to provide to
authenticate. Then you have the opportunity to save the config in the
config file in a click and it's there forever. Everytime I install a new
laptop, I just copy the wpa_supplicant config files and never think of
it anymore. I have spent much more time speaking of this on this forum
than doing it in reality.
The only thing I had read up to now against wpa_gui was that it's
using Qt, which is written in C++. I dislike C++ but I wouldn't get rid
of mail clients or web browsers because they are written in this
language; I think it explains why they have so many bugs, but I'm sure
there would be even more if they were written in C.
I agree with you 200% that a Curses User Interface would be very
attractive.
Didier
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