[permissions dialog] was (Re: properties dialog relationship to displayed selection)

[Mathieu Lacage <mathieu_lacage myrealbox com>]

On Sun, 2003-09-14 at 13:31, Petri Kanerva wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-09-11 at 21:38, Mathieu Lacage wrote:
> > As a side note, I was thinking today about a recursive property dialog
> > vs the current one. It would allow you to set a permission recursively
> > on the subfolders of a folder. I wonder what the UI would look like: do
> > you have any suggestion about this ? Would it make sense only in the
> > permissions tab as a toggle button  (recursive or non-recursive mode) ?
> 
> Have missed that feature for a long time. A checkbox or a toggle button
> would be both fine ways of doing it. Could this be possible in the early
> 2.5.x versions, so finally I could do it recursively from Nautilus.

Well, I do not think it is that obvious. For one because the other
properties in the other tabs could also be applied recursively which
means you might want to make the toggle button a property of the window
and not of a specific tab. Furthermore, it is not clear to me what the
names of the two toggle button alternatives would be: "normal" vs
"recursive" ? this really strikes me as bad names. Any other idea ?

This discussion prompts me to raise the issue of this permissions dialog
earlier than I wanted to: how the hell is a "normal" user supposed to
use this dialog ? 
I mean, I don't even know what the sticky bit for a file or a directory
is used for (I have been using a UNIX system for a bit more than 5 years
now and I do not feel like an average user at all) so, it is hard for me
to imagine any user being comfortable with this dialog. Also, I can
remember vividly the first time I heard about a directory being
"executable" and I can imagine the pain inflicted to any new UNIX/Linux
user looking at this dialog and seeing he can make a directory
executable. 

So, to be a bit constructive, here is the set of tasks I imagine a user
trying to achieve with a "permissions" tab which I would rename
"exchange" tab. (really, you should not have to change the UNIX
permissions of a set of files).

[most often] (but not too much)
   - make the content of a directory readable over the LAN to everyone.
   - make the content of a directory readable over the LAN to another
user (possibly by setting a specific password to authenticate this user)
   - same as the two above but readable/writable
   - make the content of a directory readable over the internet to
everyone
   - make the content of a directory readable/writable over the internet
to everyone
   - make the content of a directory readable/writable over the internet
to one user (through some sort of authentication of the  other user)
   - same as above but only readable.

[rare]
   - make the content of a directory read-only for himself to make sure
he never modifies any of the file inside.
   - make a file read-only for himself to make sure he never modifies
it.

[ultra rare] (which user is running linux on a multi-user system ?)
   - make the content of a directory readable to another user
   - make the content of a directory readable/writable to another user
   - make the content of a directory readable to the world
   - make the content of a directory readable/writable to the world

Finally, I'd like to explain  how I ended up using/hacking this dialog:
I copied from a CD the set of directories which were located in it to my
HD and all the directories/files ended being read-only (and executable
for the directories). It feels to me this is not the optimum behavior. I
do not know where this comes from but I intent to fix this first to make
all the new directories/files readable/writable.

There are quite a lot of ideas here but it's just too much fun playing
with nautilus and patching stuff all over after all this time...

regards,
Mathieu
-- 
Mathieu Lacage <mathieu gnu org>