FAQs
Copyright (C) 1999-2004 by Steve Litt
Main UMENU FAQ (current as of UMENU version 0.7.0)
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What is UMENU?
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UMENU is the Universal Menu System
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What is the Universal Menu System?
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The Universal Menu System is a menu-style user interface designed to be
portable between operating systems and useful in a number of
environments,
including teletype I/O i.e. telnet, formatted text such as curses or
ansi.sys,
GUI (X and Windows), Java, HTML (browser), and, due to the
expandability
built into its specification, almost any other environment. The
Universal
Menu System (hereafter referred to as UMENU) is Open Source Software,
meaning
it's free in the same way Linux is free. UMENU is also an Open Source
Software
Project devoted to creating and improving the UMENU software.
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How much does UMENU cost?
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It's absolutely free if you download it from http://www.troubleshooters.com/umenu/download.htm
or any other no-cost source. Other vendors may charge you for UMENU or
its derivative works, but even if they do, they must give you the
sourcerivative works, but even if they do, they must give you the
source
code as part of the deal. This is a requirement of the GPL license.
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Where can I get my copy of UMENU?
What are the system requirements to run UMENU?
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Linux, Unix or BSD (Later UMENU versions might support Windows)
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PERL 5 installed and working
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A text editor to configure the menu system
Will it run in a telnet session?
Will it run in a GUI environment?
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Yes. You can run it in a command line box in a GUI environment. It will
run as a console app, with no mouse support or fonts.
Is UMENU 0.7.0 a stable version?
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Nope. It's alpha. That being said, UMENU has worked worked flawlessly
on several Linux machines. Version 0.7.0 represents a huge
simplification, resulting in better reliablity and maintainability.
What language is it written in?
But isn't it slow, Perl being an interpreter?
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Perl might not be the best language to calculate the first billion
prime
numbers, but it's plenty fast enough to open a Menu Definition File,
paint
the screen, and execute the desired shell command in a tenth the time
it
takes the user to hit the next menu keystroke. Note that screen
painting
is slow in telnet sessions, but that's a function of telnet, and would
occur with plain text output in the tightest C code.
Can I modify UMENU?
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Absolutely. However, its GNU GPL software license requires you to give
your modified
source code to anyone you give or sell the modified software to. You
must
also retain all copyright notices. Note also, that if you make
improvements
on UMENU, you'll be of greatest service if you coordinate with the program's
maintainer so that your improvements go in the distribution
version.
See the included GPL license for details.
Can my proprietary software use UMENU without becoming Open Source
itself?
- Depends what you mean by "use". It's perfectly permissible to
have UMENU call proprietary
programs. By doing so you can even use UMENU as a front end to
proprietary programs. However, you may not mix UMENU's code, in full or
in substantial part, with proprietary programs, or any programs not
compatible with the GNU GPL license. See the accompanying license for
details.
My organization needs something like
UMENU for a different purpose than
issuing OS commands. Can you supply a version to do that?
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Maybe in the future. However, I'm very busy. If your need can
accommodate your new program being GPL compatible, why not start with
the UMENU code and modify it to fit your needs.
- Can I join the UMENU project?
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Absolutely. We're looking for programmers, documentors, strategists and
menu designers. See the How To Participate
page for details.
- Can I get paid for joining the UMENU project?
- Not directly. However, think of the value to your career to be
an author
of a piece of internationally used software.
Copyright (C) 1999-2004 by Steve Litt