Re: [Nautilus-list] User levels

[Kenneth MacDonald <kenny holyrood ed ac uk>]

>>>>> "Ramiro" == Ramiro Estrugo <ramiro eazel com> writes:

    Ramiro> Remember that Nautilus as it currently stands has the
    Ramiro> almost conflicting goals of being usable by novice users
    Ramiro> new to UNIX systems as well as experts that want to be
    Ramiro> exposed to all details of their systems.

Initially a deceptively hard target.

    Ramiro> The user level mechanism we came up with is a compromise
    Ramiro> between these two extremes.

Indeed.  A worthy first shot.

    Ramiro> It would be fairly straightforward hacking to either make
    Ramiro> Nautilus always stay in the default user level, say
    Ramiro> Intermediate, or even come up with a new custom designed
    Ramiro> one.  I say 2 days or so of hacking.  The hard part as
    Ramiro> always is coming up with the right set of things to
    Ramiro> expose.

The problem is that the sets (notice the plural) will change over time
as individual and community confidence and expertise in the product
grows.  It's impractical to modify source every time the need tweeked.

My mantra is "Configurable Configurability".  Here's where I get shot
down in flames...  Has anyone on this list got experience using MS
policies to control users' access to various things?  They're
invaluable, yet frustratingly limited for managing large user
communities.  GConf has support for almost all that's required, but
applications don't make true use of it.

MS have taken the approach of having the congiguration space
completely writeable for stand alone installations (just the default
really).  At least you've recognised you require something for these
situations, and the "User Levels" is probably the best solution for
now.

    Ramiro> If you are interested in this, you can always post
    Ramiro> specific questions about making this possible.

When I get time (ha - what's that!), I intend to roll out a (very)
small number of installations to get a handle on how our users can
handle the whole concept.  I'll no doubt have lots of feedback at that
point.

I'm a big bad syetems manager who needs to be able to do things like...

Mandate the user's root window pixmap, theme, http proxy, available
bonobo components, etc. or to deny access to arbirary control centre
settings, or hide most of the filesystem tree, create standard read
only system menus and root window (icons, etc).  And of course, all of
these can have different settings for different users based on their
username or group membership.  Before anyone criticises me for doing
this, this is what paying corporate customers want.  It's a very
different world from a hacker's desktop/laptop.

Have any of the big GNOME Foundation members raised these issues.  I
would imagine they must have some experience of them, either in CDE or
other products.

-- 
Kenny

ADML Support, EUCS, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland.