[tor-dev] Vidalia 2.0 - an complete rewrite

[Leo Unglaub]

Hey friends,
i want to inform you that i am working on a complete new control tool
for Tor. I know some people use Vidalia for it, but i never liked the
program and the people i showed vidalia often got confused.

So i started to rewrite it from scratch and i am close to the release of
the source code. (Currently i need to clean up some classes in there)

I had a few things on my feature list for the new control tool and i
want to share/discuss it with you. Because maybe some of my ideas are
bad or maybe you have some additional ideas for features.

A: "native work flow". Thats one of the main goals of my rewrite. The
current Vidalia does things a little bit different than people are used
to do it. So they get confused, because it does not behave "naturally".
So instead of QT i used GTK and followed as always the GNOME HIG.
(http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/3.5/)


B: "Multi configuration setup". What do i mean by that? Well, in my case
for example i use Tor on my laptop and i am often in different places
where i need different settings for tor. For example, if i am at home i
can give tor all the bandwith i have, because at home i don't care. In
my company on the other hand i cant do that. I am allowed to run Tor in
the company, but with a bandwith limit of 2000kbit/s. (Yes, my company
allows this ... well, i am the technical directory, so it was my call :) )

But i need a different Tor configuration there. Or if i am giving a talk
and only have mobile internet connections i need every bit of bandwith
for checking my emails so i want no server, only Tor client support.
Currently i have multiple torrc files for that and always move them
arround. That works for command line junkies like me, but even i am
anoyed to do this multiple times a day.

So i added the "multi configuration" support into the tool. This allows
you to define multiple configurations and simply change them with a
click from the gnome2 notification panel.


C: "GUI for config settings". Well, some users are simply not ready to
modify config files on there own. So i provide a simple gui (tab based)
for all config options i found in the normal torrc file. Always with an
explonation (with needs spellchecking, because my spelling sucks in
german and is even worse in english :) ) so the user can deside what an
option would to.

D: "Notifications": My control tool uses the normal desktop
notifications to inform the user about changes in the running tor
application. For example if there is a problem building the circuit or
something you get the notifyd message and can simply react to events
without having the arm log open all the time.

Thats just a quick overview of what i am duing right now. The source
code will be released soon and is of course 100% open source. If you
have some addiional ideas, feedback, wishes, ... i would like to hear them.

Thanks and greetings
Leo

PS: I am Germam and very sorry for every spelling error i did above.

-- 
Leo Unglaub
Nachreihengasse 39 / Top 7
A-1170 Vienna
Austria

Phone: 0650 / 6575103
Website: http://www.leo-unglaub.net
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LeoUnglaub

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