Goals for first release (June/USENIX)

[Andrew Atrens]

Chris Pressey wrote:
On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 00:21:42 -0800 (PST)
There's a general feeling that the UI should be abstract.  That is, we
shouldn't tie ourselves down to one sort of interface (like curses.) 
The frontend and the backend should be seperated, so that different
backends (package manager, installer, etc) can use different front ends
(curses, web interface, etc.)

There's a couple of ways to go about this.  We could use an API - but
that ties us into a particular language (or set of languages that
implement the bindings.)  I think it would be better to use IPC.
How about using XML for the interface? Provides a whole of flexibility 
and even a fair amount of backward compatibility (newer UIs could talk 
to older backends - they (the backends) would just pitch any new 
commands/attributes/groups they hadn't yet learned of. Older UIs on the 
other hand could talk to any same or newer backend.