Re: Merging "Proxy" and "Network" applets

[Carlos Garnacho <carlosg gnome org>]

On Tue, 2006-08-29 at 08:11 +0100, Darren Kenny wrote:
> At the system level it does make sense to link the proxy with the interface
> settings, but only in terms of a "Location" profile - taking a machine from one

g-s-t network tool has the concept of locations, I think it would be
worth to make it set proxy settings too, read below my proposal of mixed
user/system settings.

> >From a user perspective, while I think there is a situation where it might be
> acceptable to set the proxy for the system and the user *might* be happy with
> that, but there will also be cases where the user would like to override the
> system setting - e.g. should the proxy server be down, the user has moved the
> machine temporarily, x-proxy is faster today, etc... If this is all configured
> at the system level, then the user may need access to the system administration
> privileges to simply change the proxy (at least on some systems) this wouldn't
> make sense to me, so I reckon there will still be a need for a user-level setting.

There's a branch in g-s-t to make it use PolicyKit to authenticate, and,
if there's a more general adoption of it in the desktop, g-s-t will end
using it. besides other stuff, PolicyKit could allow to mix in the same
GUI protected (system) elements with non-protected (user) elements [1].
This way would allow the user to be always able to deal with user
settings, and unlock those protected elements if he requires it (and has
permissions, etc...).

	Regards


[1] http://www.gnome.org/~carlosg/stuff/tmp/users-locked.png
    http://www.gnome.org/~carlosg/stuff/tmp/users-password.png
    http://www.gnome.org/~carlosg/stuff/tmp/users-unlocked.png