Standardized Phone Settings Interface

[Tobias Schoel]

Hi to everyone,

first let me thank you for all your work on the software for Freerunner
(and Neo1973). I now have a working smartphone on open source basis.

But I have a proposal: a standardized phone settings interface (psi).

The different distributions all store their information on phone
settings in different places. Some hardcoded (FSO <3), some in some
obstruse locations. In order to simplify the usage for non-developer
users and to increase interoperability, a standardized file format to
describe personal phone settings should be found (e.g. based on XML) and
a standardized command should be implemented in each distribution, which
"adopts" as many of the phone settings described in a file to the
distribution.

So lets assume I'm a non-developer user, who flashes the Freerunner with
a new distribution. If I want to get my desired phone settings, all I
got to do, is write a file like this called "my_settings.xml":

<settings name="my phone settings">
 <ringtone>
  <file-location>/usr/share/sounds/</file-location>
  <file-name>my_ringtone.ogg</file-name>
  <volume>79</volume>
 </ringtone>
 <messagetone>
  <repeats>3</repeats>
 </messagetone>
 <calloptions>
  <reveal-caller-id>true</reveal-caller-id>
 <calloptions>
 <garbage>
  <foobar>1</foobar>
 </garbage>
 <garbage2>
</settings>

and invoke the command on shell: "openpsi my_settings.xml" which gives
me something like:

"This is OpenPSI for [Distribution] on [Device]. Importing settings from
my_settings.xml:
ringtone -- file-location: IMPORTED
ringtone -- file-name: IMPORTED
ringtone -- volume: RECALCULATED TO 2 -- IMPORTED
messagetone -- repeats: NOT IMPLEMENTED (YET)
calloptions -- reveal-caller-id: SEE DETAILS AT openpsi_log_details.txt
-- IMPORTED
garbage -- foobar: UNKNOWN_SPEC
garbage2 -- :NO END TAG -- ERROR

IMPORTED: 4/7, NOT IMPLEMENTED: 1/7, UNKNOWN_SPEC: 1/7, ERROR: 1/7"

How these settings are implemented is open to the developers of the
distribution but one can think of the following or similar "problems":
 - the ringtone is hardcoded -> solution: the specified file
(my_ringtone.ogg) has to be given on running "openpsi my_settings.xml"
and is copied by openpsi to the location specified in the hard code.
 - numeric values (volume) or strings (file-paths unix vs. windows) have
to be converted to suit the distribution (e.g. the distributions for
freerunner mostly use the values 0 to 3 for microphone-volume (!?)) ->
solution: the standardized percentages are calculated to suit these
specifications

So the developers of the distributions should agree on several widely
used phone settings, which may be specified in this standard. If and how
they implement them is open to them, but they should provide a
standardized command like "openpsi" or something like that.

This would really help users try and use different distributions without
having to learn the specialties of each distributions and without having
to work through all these posts at "lists.openmoko.org" which are
partially outdated.

Thanks again to everyone.

ciao

Toscho