[Bitpim-devel] Update

[Roger B. <ro...@ro...>]

The first phase of using protocol descriptions rather than handling
stuff byte by byte now has the infrastructure in place.

Do an update (with -d to pick up the new examples directory).

Then run analyser examples/vx4400phonebookentry.txt 
and you will see it in action.  

This is the bigger picture:

- All protocol should be described at a higher level.  For an
  example see p_lgvx4400.p

- Reading and writing data should be done by manipulating one of
  these.  You can easily access members.  For example with the
  one description in there:

    stuff.serial1=3

  The class handles all marshalling and sanity checking of data.

- When sending stuff to the data log, you also supply a class
  or an object that read the buffer. For example:

            entry=p_lgvx4400.readphoneentryresponse()
            entry.readfrombuffer(prototypes.buffer(rawbytes))
            self.logdata("Read entry", res, entry)

- The datalog inserts a special line with the class name
  For example:

  9:34:58.312 LG-VX4400: Read entry Data - 529 bytes
  <#! p_lgvx4400.readphoneentryresponse !#>
  00000000 ff 13 4c 00 ea 00 00 00 02 02 ea 00 00 00 25 00     ..L...........%.

- In the protocol log pane, you can press Ctrl-Alt-P and it 
  will bring up the protocol analyser on what you highlighted
  (or all of it if nothing was highlighted)
  
- You can also save protocol information to a file and run
  the analyser stand alone.  For the truly lazy (like me :-)
  it will look in the clipboard if you don't give it a filename.

The point behind all this:

- Make protocol decoding and encoding more formal, and easier
  to see and very easy to develop

- Very easy to get data from users and run the analyser on it

- Easy to play 'what-if' on the data

These are the next steps:

- Make com_lgvx4400.py use descriptions for all protocol

- Strip file down into seperate ones.  For example a generic
  "brew" file, and an "lg phonebook one".  The individual
  phone classes will then multipily inherit from whatever
  components they use.

- Replace the phonebook grid widget with a text widget.
  The raw phonebook dictionary will just be dumped in there
  and will be easy to edit.

- Integrate in Alan and Scott's work

- Start on new phonebook gui widget

- Start on import and export

- Start on synchronisation and merging

Some little projects in case anyone wants one:

- Move all gui code over to the wx namespace.  This is needed
  because the exception handling code now prints out local
  variables and the import * approach leaves several 
  thousand local variables

- Add enhancements to the analyser.  Add a menu bar.  Allow
  the contents to be refreshed from the clipboard.  Allow
  multiple entries to be saved out as a plain text file.

- Add protocol samples to the examples directory.  My preference
  is for longer sequences (eg initialising and grabbing all
  phonebook entries).  Since this is in public CVS you will need
  to wipe your phonebook and only have dummy entries.  (I use 
  the backup/restore stuff for this :-)  
  
  As protocol descriptions get added, the examples can be modified
  with the classnames.

- Start writing protocol descriptions.  Note that it may change 
  slightly over the next few days as I discover issues.

Roger