Re: Document Centricity in GNOME [LONG]

["David Tabachnikov (NetHunter)" <captain isdn net il>]

Moshe Zadka wrote:
> 
> On 10 May 2000, Alan Shutko wrote:
> 
> > > "Open Safely" gives the user the implication that opening a file normally
> > > using the plain "Open" command in _unsafe_.
> >
> > Yes.  Isn't it wonderful?  Users _should_ get the implication that
> > opening a file "normally" is unsafe, because it is.  They should be
> > afraid of it, and it should take a lot of convincing for them to open
> > something with macros on.
> 
> Note that in an ideal world (the same one with 36 hour days), "Open
> Safely" *will* run macros -- in a Java-like sandbox. (Tcl calls it Safe
> Tcl, and Python calls this restricted execution)
> 
> Thus, the more "Open Safely" used, even for one's own documents (in case
> there's a bug), the better.
> --
> Moshe Zadka <moshez@math.huji.ac.il>
> http://www.oreilly.com/news/prescod_0300.html
> http://www.linux.org.il -- we put the penguin in .com

But we're not in an ideal world, meaning, we can't do this. In practice,
it could be added as a menu item "Open in a restriced enviroment", so
the user will be able to "Open", "Open Safely"(Without macros, or
anything for that matter, besides teh actuall data), "Run
restriced"(Which should do it like you said, and should be the default),
for two reasons, first, it should be obvious to the end luser, that he
is executing something, once the menu says "Run", which can be
dangerous, (hence the Restriced), and he can be relativly safe. I would
like to comment, though, that 3 options will confuse the user, which is
never good. So, each of these options should show up only when avaible.
So, I don't think "Open Safely" will do in Gnumeric, because of the
example you gave (What if you write a GUILE function inside? If you open
it without code, you'll lose this function and the end luser won't
understand why some parts of the document does not show up correctly.
But if your guile code will run in a shitspread, inside a sandbox, the
user can be relatively safe. Forgive me if this sounds like a mess =)

PS: Offtopic: Moshe, where can I get your notes to the GTK+ talk?
PPS: I don't think this discussion is only for gnome-gui/gnome-devel,
since the file manager is very important here, so I think you should
post it to the nautilus list as well.

-- 
Best Regards,
	David Tabachnikov (NetHunter)
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