Re: Backporting locking cells / worksheet protection

["Andreas J. Guelzow" <aguelzow taliesin ca>]

Floris Kraak wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 21, 2002 at 10:15:07AM -0600, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote:
>
> > I don't think that the patch will introduce any stability problems, but 
> > it may be greatly misleading to users: The patch prohibits the editing 
> > of locked cells but does not prohibit the clearing or deletion or... of 
> > a locked cell. Users may wrongly perceive that a locked cell on a 
> > protected worksheet is in fact safe.
>
> Just curious; Does the unstable branch prevent that?

Well, once we get to the the first production release of the gnome2 
branch we have hopefully completed the implementation of "locking cells" 
and this will not be an issue. The stable 1.0.x branch on the other hand 
is already a production release.

> I've seen your patch to introduce further protection on ranges
> but large parts of it won't apply to stable so I left it.
> I suppose something like that could be 'backported' but it might
> well end up being a reimplementation of existing functionality.

There are lots of differences between the stable and unstable branch as 
far as analysis tools etc are concerned and backporting these changes 
(and guaranteeing stability) is virtually impossible.

> Finally; How about documentation? Can't we just document
> this function as being not totally foolproof? I can imagine putting
> a 'incomplete' label on the 'locked' property of a cell. This might
> very well be a good idea regardless, because right now in the stable
> branch this checkbox is utterly and completely useless.


That would surely be a good idea, but imho users will normally use only 
the manual after the application has failed them.

Andreas

--
Prof. Dr. Andreas J. Guelzow                    
Concordia University College of Alberta
aguelzow math concordia ab ca
http://www.math.concordia.ab.ca/aguelzow