We could move to this sort of login dialog:

--------------------------------------
Server profile   : ___________ | edit
User             : ___________
Password         : ___________
workplace profile: ___________ | edit

         Login         Cancel
--------------------------------------

• it would be an alternative. In that case one would have a list of possible workplaces in the one and only config file. One would then have sections in that file defining servers etc for the workplaces.
• To facilitate alpha / beta testing --- and to provide people an easy extra option later to see if there might be a problem with their own server --- the client is pre-configured to include and default, to a public "test" server
  • Yes, our test server(s) might become "profiles" in line with the newly proposed login dialog.
• The workplacename for 0.1 is proposed to be "Release 0.1"
• We are discouraging 'for now" designs e.g. here as they have a tendency to stick around

from Karsten circa march 17, 2005: (a login suggestion for Horst")

Ian wisely already added "--layout ..." to the client :-)

Doing "--layout terry" or "--layout status_quo" should do as intended. I adapted gm-from-cvs.sh to
include commented out examples.

from Hilmar:

In addition to a --layout command line option we could also add this to the profile stored in your gnumed.conf. That's where IMHO all parameters that are not changed frequently and/or only by a limited number of people belong. 
The profile is the place where you choose/store all parameters you need to start up Gnumed which are not directly deducible from the user name. We have to be carefully here because there is some overlap with roles - which are directly connected to user name. You could for instance create two users "Richard_in_Richard_Space" and "Richard_in_Horst_space" and set the GUI type in the *User*-DefaultWorkplace environment via ConfigEditor appropriately. Then all you have to do in order to change your GUI is to log out and log in as a different user.

BTW - right now there is only one possibility exiting your Gnumed session by quitting the program. Would it make sense to ask the user if he wants to log in as a different user ?

So, in conclusion I vote for not adding another field to the login dialog and use existing infrastructure (roles bound to users) to make this work.

from Richard with a reply by Hilmar:

>it would be a quick'n easy feature to not 
> have to go to the config change it and reboot the program. 

Sure, that's why I suggested to use different user accounts. The workflow will be almost the same as your approach, except that in yours you change the "GUI"-listbox in the login dialog where in mine you change the user name. Both way you will edit the config tabes exactly one time at the very beginning. You will have to reboot Gnumed anyways, so the difference IMHO is really small.