CodeToast

Other People’s Code

As I mentioned in a previous installment, I had started the dreaded task of analyzing the source of the rdesktop project, to see how I might best integrate it into ToastControl. For non-programmers, ‘having the source’ often seems to be 99% of the solution, when in fact it can be closer to 10%, or I could argue even a liability sometimes. While it may seem like having the plans to a building - I don’t know of many architects that use their own system of measurement for dimensions (variable names), re-define the standard types of rooms and what they do (functions / methods), or hopefully none that use recursion (Frank Lloyd Wright meets M.C. Escher?).

The possible issues are many. First of all, rdesktop is a great piece of software and I have great respect for it, and owe thanks to the author, Matt Chapman. That could be part of the problem - what if this guy is a genius, and I’m not able to even comprehend his masterpiece?¹ I risk not being able to figure it out, damaging my fragile binary ego. Even worse would be that he thinks he’s a genius, but falls somewhat short of the mark - creating an obtuse and abstruse monstrosity that seeks to reinvent software development at it’s core (you know, I’ll bet I can do better than this silly Boolean stuff…). For examples of this, look no further than the Daily WTF. More…

ToastControl starts to crawl…

I’ve managed to plug away at ToastControl a bit over the last couple weeks, and have some items to report.

Decisions decided

• - I’m going to use Python. I wanted to use a dynamic language that would be flexible. The heavy lifting is done by the plug-ins like Rdesktop / mstsc and VNC anyway, written in C - the surrounding application doesn’t need tons of speed. Ruby was a contender, but Python seems much more suited to cross-platform thick-client apps like this, at least at the moment.

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Ask not what your Operating System can do for you.

I recall first using Windows 3.1 and thinking it was pretty cool - but man they needed to do somthing about the file manager. I was a DOS user, accustomed to xcopy and the superb XTree and XTreeGold applications. I’m not asking for too much - just the basic abilities xcopy offers, like continuation after an error, copying files after a newer date, and the like. You know though, Windows 95 was just a few years around the corner - I was sure they would fix the basics by then.

Windows 95 didn’t do much for file management, other than eliminate the MDI interface we were just getting used to. In fact, the notoriously bad progress message during file operations just made things worse - it wouldn’t even tell us how fast the bytes were moving. I set to work on a shell extension to add some of the xcopy goodness to Windows Explorer. More…