Hello,
Note: This is a reply message to the Smartcard-Linux mailing list in
which I place in carbon-copy the Opencard mailing-list. I suggest to
the Opencard people to reply only to [EMAIL PROTECTED] in order to
save the time of other Opencard members that are not interested in
the subject.
---
Jan Iven wrote:
> I think we shouldn't muck around with the serial options, either.
> stty (or the like) should be able to set everything up correctly, or
> at least lets move this into the resource manager on a
> device-by-device basis (see below), not application-by-application
> basis.
Definitely, you should have some component managing the communication
with the card terminal and it would be much better if it offers
a generic API so that multiple drivers for multiple terminals could
be plugged in but the application layers only see one API.
This thing exists in two different incarnations:
1) a windows-centric solution : PC/SC, in which a major
component is part of the OS (and not ported anywhere
else at this date)
2) a portable and moreover Object Oriented Framework solution
implemented in Java : OpenCard Framework.
(Version 1.0 has just been released April 29th 1998.)
> + After having a look at the PC/SC specs, I suggest we should aim for
> that. [ ... ]
> I would like to see a generic API to build applications on instead of
> building them on top of the driver. There are rather a lot of
> different readers out there with only minor differences (LEDs to turn
> on/off etc), so much of the driver code will be shared. With
> the PC/SC specs already existing, we would then present a similar API
> as the "evil empire", making transition to linux as smooth as possible
> (think of all the experimental "wallets" (ultrasecure, but will only
> run under Win95..).
I would really like to point you to OpenCard before you attempt to
reimplement a PC/SC resource manager from scratch. It is very easy
to write Card Terminal drivers that will inherit from the same
abstract classes as specified by the OCF framework. As a first result,
a PC/SC wrapper has been developped that allow the use the OCF API
through PC/SC reader access. Other drivers either based on native
implementation (through JNI) or that can use a 100% pure Java
implementation (based on the new Java1.2 CommPORT API) are currently
being developped. Gemplus is investigating for its card terminals
the possibility to have 100% pure Java drivers in addition to PC/SC
which mean that they would come *for free* on Linux if CommPORT is
ported (the "muck around with the serial options" as mentionned above)
by Sun (or if they give you the sources).
Going PC/SC would only allow people to migrate from Linux to Windows
IMHO. On the contrary, going OCF would allow Linux people to write
*portable* solutions (even on Windows!, but also on JavaStations,etc.).
The OpenCard consortium manages the OCF standard to access smartcards.
It includes companies such as IMB, Gemplus, Bull, Schumberger, Sun,
Visa, SCM, etc.
Please see the OpenCard documentation at http://www.opencard.org/.
Cheers,
Christophe.
= Rule of Accuracy: When working toward the solution of a problem, =
= it always helps if you know the answer. =
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Linux Smart Card Developers - M.U.S.C.L.E.
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