Re: gnome-about-me

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Tue, 2004-09-21 at 19:21 +0200, Diego Gonzalez wrote:
> hi 
> 
> i'm planning on doing a gnome program to present information about the
> user and changed whatever is allowed.
> 
> I think that the information stored in GECOS should not be modified,
> things like full name, login name, room and phone are probably managed
> by an administrator. The question is, if i should allow this stuff to be
> changed by the "home user" and how to differentiate between "home
> installations" and an "managed installations" done by an admin.

I'd recommend using a library like libuser (available in Fedora, don't
know if it's a Red Hat thing or not), which provides an API for querying
and changing that sort of information.  "GECOS fields" are an older UNIX
thing; a lot of corporate desktops these days don't use /etc/passwd at
all, they use LDAP or eDirectory or Active Directory or whatever.  You'd
want your app to Just Work(tm) no matter what sort of user directory is
in use.  A good abstraction library would also, I imagine, make it easy
to check if the information is changeable or not.

Also dont' forget that Evolution has some (all) of this information, so
your app could also just be an additional simple front-end to e-d-s.
Especially if e-d-s already has (or will have) hooks for updating the
system user information.

> 
> >From this dialog the gdm face could also by changed.
> 
> Other stuff: should i include information about the address, email and
> im accounts of the user? should the user be able to change information
> about its address? if the installation is a "home based" one then the
> information related to the address will be kept in gconf, but if the
> installation is an enterprise one probably the address related stuff
> should be modified in an LDAP server or something like that.

Use e-d-s for that sort of stuff.  It's all stored there in GNOME 2.8+.

> 
> What do you think about this? should this stuff be integrated or should
> i just show the gdmface/GECOS stored information in this dialog?
> 
> Here is a screenshot of the tool as it is rigth now:
> http://topos.ath.cx:8080/~diego/about-me-v2.png
> 
> any suggestions would be appreciated.
> 
> Diego
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.