[Pcsclite-muscle] An alternate Python library for PC/SC Lite

[Russell Stuart]

On Mon, 2014-12-08 at 09:10 +0100, Ludovic Rousseau wrote:
> Usimtool looks to be very powerfull.  Maybe you could document it better
> with examples of use cases

There is some documentation hiding in the python-pcsclite API doco:

  http://python-pcsclite.sourceforge.net/doc/html/#the-usimtool-py-program

> make it a "real" application and not just a sample?

I wrote it as a prototyping tool, so I could explore how one is supposed
to drive a ISO 7816 smartcard.  Yes, it became fairly powerful - mostly
because the messy corner cases on driving a ISO 7816 smartcard are not
covered in the ISO 7816 specifications, or anything else I could find
on the web. [0]  But I always intended to throw it away once I got my
application running, so isn't tested or well documented.  I only keep it
around in case I'm asked to develop a another smartcard application, so
it is effectively unmaintained.  Still, someone else might find it
useful for what I used it for - prototyping.  That's why it is sitting
in the examples directory.


[0]  It amazed me how poor the ISO reference documentation was compared
     to the IETF documentation (or even the Python documentation). 
     Especially so because ISO specs are expensive and hard to find,
     whereas the open source documentation is free and easy to find.