Re: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/xanadux/qomunicator/

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 06:38:50PM +0100, Pavel Machek wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> > > > > Daemon that presents 5 virtual telephones talking to one real
> > > > > telephone, or something like that. Similar to gpsd.
> > > >
> > > > Need to look at gpsd. But I think virtual telephone may be a bit too
> > > > much. I like to look at it as on the message bus supporting
> > > > synchronous and asynchronous communication. I can't see any additional
> > > > value from virtual phone abstraction.
> > >
> > >  the principle behind gpsd is that you issue _simple_ commands
> > >  of one character in length, and the responses come back "preparsed".
> > >
> > >  so gpsd takes care of parsing the NMEA data for you, and if you happen
> > >  to know which one-character commands to type, then you can just telnet
> > >  to gpsd and get a rough idea of what's going on.
> > 
> > But that's just proxy. Just a bit more intelligent. No need for any
> > virtual phones (if we have the same understanding of the virtual
> > phone). Just the API for giving commands and sending responses. State
> > and other internals are handled internally by the proxy. And I think
> > AT command interface will not be suitable: you won't be able to do too
> > many things (starting with file operations).
> 
> Well, file operations are not nice to do over AT, and neither is
> calendar manipulation. Not sure about sim-card contact manipulation.
> 
> I still believe it is reasonable to do AT commands where they make
> sense, and the rest with custom protocol. In my eyes it is stupid to
> do voice call with
> 
> D1234
 
 this one requires:

 switch (input[0])
 case 'D':
        gn_dial_phone(input+1);

        break;

> when you can parse 
> 
> ATDT1234;
 
 this one requires:

 if (strncmp(input, "ATDT", 4) == 0)
        gn_dial_phone(input + 5)
 else if ....

 i know which one i prefer :)

> as well, and it has added benefit of not having reinvent another
> protocol. 

 if it was a complex system, with hundreds of commands, complex
 interaction, i'd agree with you.

 ... but this is _so_ trivial ...