[Freeciv-Dev] connect dialog update

[Mike Kaufman <kaufman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

here the update on what's happening:

Nutshell: the connect dialog is being postponed indefinitely.

Longer explanation: I have become convinced for several reasons that the
current implementation is not the ideal one. A better implementation is one
that I originally started with: that being one in which the server is
controlled via network packets rather than sockets and server commandline.
This has many advantages:
1. you can resurrect a spawned server if you disconnect the client from it. 
2. It is a much cleaner interface.
3. the current implementation depends on some functions that may not be fully
   portable across platforms.
4. It is semi-difficult to tell if commands have succeeded or not.

it also has some disadvantages:
1. It is insecure. You must make sure that whoever has access to hack level
   is trusted.
2. Solving 1. requires either encryption or access to the same filesystem or
   probably both.
3. It probably requires writing a couple new packets which handle 
   command-responses from the server. (we usually need to know that a command 
   has succeeded or failed before sending another command)
there are probably others.

A solution which has been mentioned before: that of sending a savegame over
the network to the client is not viable in my opinion.

The key here is that the current implementation's disadvantages are
inherent whereas the better implementation's are not. Coding can solve
them. Unfortunately, it requires quite a bit of coding, and I'm not up to
it right now.

All is not lost, the gui portion of the current patch is fairly solid and
can most likely be reused. I also have some old patches lying around that
do implement a preliminary version of the better method. If anyone is 
interested in doing this, please let me know so we can work out the
details before you waste a lot of time.

-mike