PGP-Vis Direction
Posted by Trejkaz Mon, 28 Feb 2005 02:04:00 GMT
I’ve been thinking a bit about where I want to go with the OpenPGP Visualisation stuff.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the next stage of development will be breaking apart the application into components which can be used on either the client or the server.
- OpenPGP graph builder which could exist solely on the server, and output XML (I think I’ve more or less completed this already.)
- Generic viewer app and applet which can load the XML for viewing.
- Graph Studio app which can load XML, save XML, and perhaps edit the graph. Both these apps which involve viewing will need to automatically generate things like the View menu, based on the attributes present in the graph.
- OpenPGP plugin for the Graph Studio which will generate an OpenPGP graph for you on the client, like the existing prototype does right now. This way you can generate it from your own keyring, save as XML, send it to someone else, and they can check it out, without ever needing to see your keyring.
The advantages I see if I did it this way:
- The user doesn’t need access to an OpenPGP keyring to see how the application works.
- The XML file can be generated in some other language (PHP, or even something really nuts like Smalltalk?)
- Possibilities for visualising other kinds of graph.
I am also thinking about supporting Graphviz’ >>DOT format in addition to XML, and thus being able to visualise graphs output from a great many other sources. But this requires me writing a parser for DOT format, which I’m not keen on doing just yet. If I find an existing library, that would be good. But initial searches have come up dry.