Re: [Snowy] Note sharing with other users - Plan of attack

[Jeff Schroeder <jeffschroeder computer org>]

On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 8:06 AM, Sandy Armstrong
<sanfordarmstrong gmail com> wrote:
> Good stuff.  Some comments below.
>
> On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 8:40 PM, Jeff Schroeder
> <jeffschroeder computer org> wrote:
>> Instead of making notes completely private or wide open to the world,
>> lets go one step further and share notes with specific people.
>> Jean-François Fortin Tam (aka Jeff) did some pretty[1] mockups[2]
>> which inspired me to think about implementing his sharing[3]
>> interface.
>>
>> The proposed implementation doesn't require sql schema changes and
>> only needs a small model change:
>> ====================================
>> diff --git a/notes/models.py b/notes/models.py
>> index af5bd1b..1aa77d3 100644
>> --- a/notes/models.py
>> +++ b/notes/models.py
>> @@ -27,6 +27,7 @@ from snowy.notes.managers import NoteManager
>>  class Note(models.Model):
>>     NOTE_PERMISSIONS = (
>>         (0, _(u'Private')), (1, _(u'Public')),
>> +        (2, _(u'Shared'))
>>     )
>>
>>     guid = models.CharField(max_length=36)
>> ====================================
>
> We could conceivably simplify this even more.  We could simply have a
> boolean field indicating whether a note is public.  If it is not
> public, then system:sharing:read*:user email com would be checked.

Hmmmmmmm. Why make things less flexible than they already are? The
note model already has this:
    permissions = models.IntegerField(choices=NOTE_PERMISSIONS, default=0)

What you're proposing seems like it means you'd throw that field out
and replace it with a BooleanField. Can you explain (I'm rather dense
sometimes) how that is better? It also means we'd have to setup and
use south to do a schema migration.

> Then we could add a public field to the Note object in the API spec (I
> forget if this is already in the draft; l.g.o is down right now).

Isn't this already handled by whatever populates note.permissions to
either 0 (for private) and 1 (for public)? Forgive my complete
ignorance on the tomboy / snowy client side of things. Perhaps you
just need to implement the permissions bit in the api spec? l.g.o is
up now (I had to fix ldap).

> Is there something I'm not thinking of that would cause this approach
> not to work?

I'll try to implement it however you think is best. Lets do what makes
changing things down the road is easier should a use case we didn't
expect come up. In specific, I was thinking of when we eventually do
integration with snowy + sparkleshare. It would be sad to paint
ourselves into a box early on. At that point we might want something
more than just Public/Private/Shared with these users.

>> If a note's permission attribute is set to 2, allow attaching a
>> NoteTag with the email address of the person to share with.
>>
>> The sharing tag's name would look something like this on the backend:
>> system:sharing:readonly:user email com
>
> Why readonly?  Why not read?  Were you thinking of having readonly,
> edit, and readedit or something?  It seems easier to just have read
> and edit, as separate tags.

Great point. How about this:

system:sharing:read:user email com
system:sharing:edit:user email com

One thing I forgot to mention. If a user != note.author has edit
capability of a note, that will not give them the ability to delete
that note. It seemed like it would do more harm than good.

-- 
Jeff Schroeder

Don't drink and derive, alcohol and analysis don't mix.
http://www.digitalprognosis.com