[pmwiki-users] global overview of passwords/authorizations

Neil Herber nospam at eton.ca
Wed Jul 20 21:37:22 CDT 2005


At 2005-07-20  05:20 PM -0500, Patrick R. Michaud is rumored to have said:
>On Wed, Jul 20, 2005 at 03:04:01PM -0700, H. Fox wrote:
> > A more compact pagelist results page might look like
> >
> > [Group.Page] [attributes] [date]
> >
> > where [attributes] shows which attributes are explicitly set for the
> > page ("r" for read, "e" for edit, etc.).  A page with only an edit
> > password would have something like -e--.
>
>Hmmm.  I like it, but it seems backwards to the Unix convention,
>which is that the letters appear when someone can perform an
>acction as opposed to when the action is restricted somehow.
>
>And I understand that what you're proposing is intended to be
>compact, but I think a viewer also needs a quick mechanism to
>see if a page is being protected by a group or site password, or
>if the page explicitly unsets the password (e.g., using "nopass").
>So, perhaps we need some indications for those states as well.

I really like this idea and would like to see it implemented!

Why not generate a table with the attributes marked? It would get away from 
Unix "confusion" and it would be easier to spot gaps. For example:

|| page name || attribute || upload || edit    || read ||
|| zxcv.zxcvzx  || group     || site      ||  page ||  ---    ||
|| zxcv.zxcvz2  || nopass  || site      ||  page ||  ---    ||

Unfortunately, a "nopass" entry has the same visual weight as a password 
source like "group". It would be better to indicate "nopass" with something 
very lightweight (indicating unprotected) while still showing that it is an 
explicitly set override. Maybe just the letter "n" for nopass ... For 
really fancy effects, make the cell background color indicate the state - 
green for protected and red for unprotected with yellow for overridden 
protection.



Neil

Neil Herber
Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/
Eton Systems, 15 Pinepoint Drive, Nepean, ON, Canada K2H 6B1
Tel: (613) 829-4668 





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