In my short time at the library, i've done more programming, linux work then I thought possible. Especially for working at a library.
We have about 11-12 computers available for patrons to use for the internet. Right now these are using a distribution called Userful. It costs the library X amount of dollars every month. The support is next to nothing. They allow multiple logins, they have outdated software, and we aren't able to do much except change network and printer settings.
This makes it pretty hard to help out the patrons. If a machine goes down, we have to reinstall and then wait on their servers to reauthorize the machine. This also puts a major cramp in productivity.
Here is born libki. Kyle Hall began work on this system about a year or so ago. It took us a while to dig through his code and get up and running. But we finally have it working.
Problem now is it's feature set is very incomplete.
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| Login window. In production would be full screen. |
Server side its using cakephp. *Shudder* It's hideous. He did a great job with it, but I can't stand templating engines. Give me straight php any day.
Client is using php+gtk. An interesting combo. I never would have thought have using php for client side. Looking through the code.. Its really not all that complicated.
Kyle's started working on a complete rewrite. Client written in C++/Qt4. Server php / Ajax.
I'm really aching to get access to the code. A project with a need. Several libraries accross the world are interested in this project. I'm not especially thrilled about Qt4 as i've never used it before. But it is cross platform, so it would be worth learning.
If I was to go and write the system on my own... I think I might would go for python for the client.
God bless,
Aaron
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