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Unnamed Grand Project

Page history last edited by Michael van der Gulik 12 years, 8 months ago

Unnamed Grand Project ("UGP")

 

TODO list

 

This is my current major project. The goal of this project is to replace the web browser with something much better. Rather than have a browser which downloads HTML and formats it, the browser will interact with distributed objects across the Internet and let them render themselves on the user's screen. This would mean that code is loaded from remote machines and executed locally.

 

From the user's point of view, this project provides a "SiteBrowser", which is similar to a web browser. The SiteBrowser shows "Sites", which are similar to web sites. The SiteBrowser has a "back" button, a "history" button, etc, and the main area of the SiteBrowser UI is the currently visited Site with which the user interacts.

 

A Site is similar to what a "Project" is now in Squeak. Sites are distributed objects. When a Site is visited by a SiteBrowser, it is given a Canvas to draw itself on and has some way of receiving UI events.

 

In this way, applications can be written which can run across the Internet. There is no need to install applications; they are accessable simply by visiting the Site that they are implemented on. Example applications would be word processors, simple games, database-like applications and so forth.

 

UIDesign ReactiveUIDesign BetterIDE LocationService

 

Contributing

Do you want to help? If so, send me an email (mikevdg at gulik.co.nz).

 

Currently I'm working on SecureSqueak. See the "Versions" section for unfinished items and pick one that interests you.

 

My plan is to get SecureSqueak to a certain level of stability where people can use it as a base for their own projects.

 

Project Components

 

A UGP client or server would be made out of the following components:

 

SecureSqueak

Status: In progress.

 

This is the "base" of this project. SecureSqueak is a fork of Squeak which allows untrusted code to run locally in a secure, sandboxed and resource-limited environment.

SecureSqueak is a large project in itself. I plan to make it reusable for other people's projects.

 

SiteBrowser

Status: Prototype only.

 

The "SiteBrowser" is the user interface that the user will see. It manages browsing between sites and keeping track of the user's "history" (so that the "back" button works).

Current code is on http://www.squeaksource.com/SecureSqueak

 

Canvas (aka Subcanvas)

 

Status: Actively coding this as of Nov 2008.

 

 

This is the UI drawing and event management. A Canvas class exists already in Squeak, but I plan to expand it significantly.

Subcanvas is part of SecureSqueak.

 

Dominions

Status: Prototype only.

 

Dominions are a resource management system. Resources, such as CPU time and disk space, can be allocated to a particular dominion. A dominion could potentially span multiple computers, and using DPON, those resources are available for the dominion owner to run his distributed applications on.

In other words, a "dominion" can be thought of as a virtual supercomputer. Computer owners can give (or sell) their computer's resources to a particular dominion.

Dominions are part of SecureSqueak.

 

DPON

Status: Works, but very unstable.

 

DPON is a distributed object replication framework, which will handle replicating the Sites between computers. Currently work is on hold (although I poke it now and then) until SecureSqueak is finished.

DPON is complex and pre-dates this wiki. See here for a very old write-up about it.

 

User management

Status: Not yet designed.

 

Users in this project will have public/private keys which can be used to authenticate users. In this way, usernames and passwords are not needed for every single site the user visits.

The "user management system" is open; there is no central repository for users. Rather, a user creates an "account" by creating a public key pair and "user" object locally. Dominions may be associated with users.

  • No passwords, although they may be optional add-ons to protect keys.
  • Users log in using public keys authentication, probably by inserting a token (USB key?).
  • Users need to also be anonymous and perhaps have the option of using various handles -> multiple identities?
  • Metadata about users is optional - name, contact details, job title etc.
  • username@dominion? Email addresses need to work with the existing Internet email system. Perhaps add support for reading mail from IMAP, POP?

 

 

UGP Programmer's Guide

 

Specification

 

Ideas for a UGP / DPON specification to allow other people to implement clients.

 

Random ideas:

 

  • Widget set.
  • Navigation.
  • User's desktop / own objects.
  • User authentication too.
  • Cut, copy, paste, drag + drop.
  • Create UI builder, with tables, images and text editor.

 

The UGP client has the minimum necessary functionality needed to load the rest of the system. It is built on SecureSqueak. This way, system updates can be made from a central server. The remotely loaded code from the central server needs to be trusted with the local devices and is the code that will manage security for other untrusted services.

 

The UGP client boots up. It manages a Canvas (whole screen(s)), Event handlers, Networking, Dominions, Namespaces, DPON, User key management. The UGP client is somehow given user information from which it then reads the location(s) of a boot server from and loads the rest of the code for that user's desktop. The "user's information" is ideally a single file which contains a username, public keys and the location of the user's account.

 

The UGP client then asks the user's account for a user interface coordinator. This coordinator manages the screen(s) (Canvas(s)), keyboard/mouse events and local devices (filesystems, sound, ...). Services such as cut/copy/paste, widget sets, navigation, user notifications etc are handled by higher levels of code.

 

...for speed, perhaps the image that has booted over the network should be saved and restored?

 

A UGP server stores the user accounts.

 

Thought: A user's account could be a dominion?

 

A remote server should appear as an interactive object. The user would manage dominions on these servers, and replicated objects would migrate to these dominions.

 

 

Installation ideas

 

We want to get the UGP installed on people's computers as easily as possible.

 

Invent SqueakLoad.

 

Most preferred: stand-alone application.

Power-users need a .zip file or .exe install file.

Make a file format and associate it with the UGP, e.g. a_link.ugp -> starts up squeak+image with this file.

- Under windows, there's an application finder - how does this work?

- Under Linux, this is a MIME type.

- MacOS?

 

With a file format for links to sites, those links could be put in web pages, emails, file browsers. Link files could be saved from within UGP.

 

Ideally the user's credentials will be associated or associatable with an opened link file.

 

Firefox / IE plug-in? No - the SiteBrowser has its own navigation, authentication, caching and so forth; making it a plug-in would confuse the user. Instead, have some file association or link of some sort from an HTML page which would open up the SiteBrowser as a separate application on that link.

 

Perhaps I could make a mini-installer (VM + small image) which downloads image, starts image, restarts image on crash, manages logs and image backups, receives link files and starts up new image or sends it to an existing image, ...? Maybe it could be written in C with versions for each OS? Make sure it gives the user a good experience:

 

  • Everything is OS-dependant.
  • If passed a settings or site-link file, it does that. If no arguments, it starts up Squeak normally.
  • When it is fired up, it looks for a settings file in a well-known location. In Windows, the registry; in Linux, ~/.squeak/squeak.
  • It pings the central server to make sure the latest image and VM are downloaded. It keeps a cache.
  • It starts up the VM with the image.

 

This mini-installer could have the file association. When initially started, it searches for Squeak. If it cannot find it locally, it will download Squeak.

 

Installations will have:

  • A user with keys, unless it's a server (?).
  • A computer with a particular VM, image, environment, etc.

 

Computers would have some IT support responsible for looking after that computer. This might be a single user, an organisation or it might be me. This support specifies:

  • Which VM and image the computer will use.
  • Which plug-ins can be downloaded and used. E.g. the IT support might approve plug-ins which automatically install when used, or IT support might disallow plugins, or let the user decide whether plug-ins can be installed. This might be dependent on the user or the computer; e.g. corporate computers may not want unauthorised plug-ins.
  • Whether there is a firewall on accessable objects.

 

Security policy for a computer would be specified by the dominion that that computer will be part of. Security policy of the user would be specified by that user's identity.

 

Specifying the dominion that a computer would be part of could be done by:

  • Setting it in the downloadable image.
  • Choosing it during the installation process.
  • Fetching this information using a DHCP server or similar.
  • Referring to the user's identity. Servers might need an identity to use for reporting to. Hmm - need more thought.

 

Specifying the security of the user would be done by the administrator of that user (which could be the user himself).

 

The security policy for a user specifies:

  • Whether that user is allowed to use computers which are not authorised, e.g. users with access to confidential data. 
  • What desktop that user will see.
  • Who that user asks for help. If the user is his own administrator, then asking a question would pop up that question on his own desktop :-).

 

Links:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929149 - describes default handling of application associations in Windows XP+.

 

Ideas for post-1.0 release

 

The 1.0 release is a major milestone that will take a long time to reach. Beyond the horizon, these are some features that would be nice:

 

  • 3-D Graphics API.
  • Sound (using OpenAL?).
  • ogg / mp3 / audio codec support.
  • Video/audio-conferencing plugins.
  • Network streaming (for audio/video) support.
  • Video codec support.
  • Printing support.
  • Device capabilities: printers, scanners, input devices, storage, webcam, etc.
  • Speed increase via Exupery?
  • Server-oriented release, perhaps using GemStone?
  • Make a release which is an operating system in it's own right; e.g. with a Linux or BSD kernel. This allows for better device support.
  • Perhaps... design hardware specifically for this? :-D. Yeah, right.

 

The question as to which features to support is determined by what the target audience is. For example, one likely demographic is office workers who would like the ability to seamlessly work from home. Office workers don't usually need 3-D graphics APIs. Another target audience is home/gamers, where 3-D graphics, sound and speed are important.

 

Potential target markets:

  • Business
  • Teleworkers (laptops).
  • Mobile computing (PDAs, mobile phones; low system requirements)
  • Gamers
  • Home users (email, chat, movies, home audio).
  • Supercomputing / distributed computing.
  • "Web-based services", but different.

 

API design

 

Any designed APIs need to be:

  • Secure,
  • Simple,
  • Platform independent,
  • Designed to take advantage of hardware or plugins.

 

APIs need to be secure, of course. Resources such as video memory usage (aka number of textures) or network usage (i.e. stream bandwidth) need to be resource controlled so that malicious code can't affect other dominions.

 

APIs need to be simple. Complex routines should be implemented as a loadable package. The API is fixed and cannot change without replacing the VM, so the majority of the complexity needs to be in automatically upgradable code. For example, paragraph rendering would be done in a package, and drawing a glyph would be part of the API.

 

APIs need to be platform independent so that code is not affected by platform quirks. Loadable packages should ideally not have any platform-specific code.

 

 

Software as a Service

 

http://slashdot.org/articles/07/08/28/1425248.shtml

 

Advantages:

  • No local installation, administration is easier.
  • Multi-user.
  • Bug-fixes is provided for you.
  • Backups done for you. Backups for an online service are often better than user's own backups.
  • Users can have cheaper computers.
  • Access from anywhere.
  • Protection from users doing silly things (viruses, losing laptops, saving over files or accidently deleting them).

 

Disadvantages:

  • Loss of control over your data (-> provide export capability).
  • Loss of data if server provider goes bankrupt (-> provide export capability, backup escrow).
  • Privacy / security / data theft concerns (-> encryption).
  • Server-side network outages / DDOS attacks (-> replication).
  • Client-side network outages (no wireless reception, firewall issues) (-> offline availability).
  • Lag (-> replication)
  • Server overload (-> replication)

 

Resources

 

A nice font: "Liberation" Sans, released publicly by RedHat. It is a nice compact font (cf DejaVu Sans, which has a lot more characters but is quite wide). It's fairly minimal; it includes Latin, Greek and Cyrillic. IMHO this is a good approach - small file size, stick to relevant characters.

 

There is a "Droid" font for Google's Andriod platform.

Also, some interesting fonts: Domyouji, Transmute, Venacti, Xenara (search for it on fonts.com).

 

Some font fixes needed for Squeak:

  • The left arrow (...and right arrow and friends) need centering. They sit on the bottom of their space.
  • The up arrow needs to be moved around as well, to make it sit nicely next to code.
  • Only a few currency signs are included.
  • The happy faces look a bit whacked out.
  • If I'm modifying the font anyway, I could chuck a logo in there.
  • Check-boxes are missing.
  • Make sure similar letters are different: 0OlI1.

 

Links

http://labs.mozilla.com/concepts/

http://noemata.net/nbng/ - random name generator.

Eventually, I'd like a GUI builder like this one: http://www.jformdesigner.com/features/

 

Internationalisation is important. Languages: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm.

Notes that English only gets you 29% of Internet users, and dropping. Mandarin Chinese is going to be huge.

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