Re: [GNUnet-developers] Gnunet Web UI

[Christian Grothoff]

On 11/22/2012 08:32 PM, SMoratinos wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm creating a new User Interface for my Gnunet server, a web user 
> interface.
>
> My Gnunet Node is running on a linux server with no X-server.
> So a webUI is more user friendly than the shell command.
>
> Right now, it's for my needs, but maybe are you interested in a webui ?
> Before publishing something, I wanted your opinion.
I personally think browsers are a security nightmare, but I also realize 
that most users will be happy with a browser-based UI, so personally I'm 
ambivalent...

Now, given that there is broadway, a Gtk+ backend which can 
automatically create a web-frontend for any Gtk+ application, I was 
always thinking that *if* we did something like this, we should base it 
on broadway.  That way, hopefully a lot of the existing C logic could be 
kept.  Now, we would still likely need some of the features you describe 
(login/authentication, ways to run the various Gtk-frontends from some 
kind of web-shell, not to mention that the files downloaded via 
gnunet-fs-gtk in broadway would end up on the server, which then may 
require a way to download them from the server via HTTP).  So getting 
all of this to work well would still be tough, but at least all of the 
work that we have put (and will still put) into Gtk-based GUIs would 
immediately _also_ have a positive impact on the web-frontend...


Here is a link introducing broadway:
http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2011/03/15/gtk-html-backend-update/
> This is some expected features :
>
> * Web User Interface :
>     - Standard client technologies HTML5 + CSS3 + Javascript.
>     - Responsive web design, from desktop computer monitors to mobile 
> phones
>
> * Server Logic :
>     - Java language
>
> * Multi-User :
>     - Access control, authorization, authentification
Please have someone who knows about this look over that logic before 
declaring your code 'stable'...

> * Control Gnunet (via shell command) :
>     - start stop arm and other service
>
> * Read statistics (via gnunet-java) :
>     - graphic, real time (websocket)
>
> * File-Sharing (via shell because gnunet-java don't have fs) :
>     - search, download, publish
>
> * Administration :
>     - modify configuration files
>
> * External API :
>     - REST, JSON + XML
>
> * MultiPlatform/ MultiLanguage :
>     - all platform, datastore, languages than Gnunet support,
>        but at the beginning at least debian/postgresql/english.
>
>
> I would share my project via Github on the beginning
>  (because it's easy for me), but later I can change, naturally.
>
> I planned to share my project (licence GPL like Gnunet),
>  can I use the name GnunetWebUI ?
Please make sure to use GPLv3+ for the license.  You may also choose to use
Affero GPLv3+ -- http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html -- that might 
be even more appropriate (and I consider this a GPLv3-compatible use as 
per section 13 of both licenses).  As for the name, I have no objections.

> What do you think about this project ?
The idea has been mentioned before, but nobody has so far produced a 
version that was working, and it is hard to judge the project by the 
feature list ;-).  So please go ahead, produce some working code (& 
documentation!), and then I think it will make sense to comment on the 
project...

Happy hacking!

Christian