tlug: Coda-based terminals

[Frank Bennett <bennett@example.com>]

A little progress report on the student terminals I'm building.

I had hoped to move development and roll-out forward in parallel,
but I'm running into some heavy-duty resistance from people who
don't understand what I'm talking about (and therefore can't be
sure that I do either).  We'll work it out, but for the moment it
means that I have to develop a complete prototype working system
that is demonstrably superior to the current tangle of kit from
Uncle Bill's Bug Farm.  In a way this is a good thing, because it
removes pressure that I would otherwise feel, when money is
committed to this.

I've at least been lent a machine to use as a test-bed, and I've
written the first building-block of the new system.  It's a
little Tk script that I've stitched in to replace the xlogin
widget that's normally supplied by "xdm".  This allows us to
snoop the password entered by the user, and use this in
background to mount the filesystem before the user is logged in.
What the user sees when the machine is started up is a graphical
login display, followed by his or her personal desktop if the
login is successful.

I've managed to get the script to behave the way I want it to,
after a lot of pondering and tweaking.  It's the first thing I've
written in Tk, and I don't really have a Tk manual to hand (Don
Libes' book on Expect has a little section at the back describing
Expectk, and that and the man pages are all I've had to go on).
Therefore ...

I would be MOST grateful to any Tk-initiates on the list who are
willing to take a look at this script and offer comments and
corrections.  Anyone who writes to me direct is welcome to a
copy, and a blurb on how I've wired it into the init sequence.

All in The Cause.

Cheers,
-- 
-x80
Frank G Bennett, Jr         @@
Faculty of Law, Nagoya Univ () email: bennett@example.com
Tel: +81[(0)52]789-2239     () WWW:   http://rumple.soas.ac.uk/~bennett/
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