[pmwiki-users] adding passwords to a page without breaking old ones

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 11:01:02AM -0500, Sandy wrote:
> If I remember correctly, if you add a password to a page, that new 
> password over-rides the ones set by group and config.php. As in, only 
> the new one will have access to the page.
> 
> Is this correct?
> 
> If so, I'll add a PITS entry so we have a way to add [1] a password 
> without disabling the other ones.

Please do.

> 
> I'm thinking of something like entering ++id:Frank  in the attrib page.

I've been thinking that the "+" (and "-") markers might be used
to add or subtract from a page's existing list.  This would be
slightly different from saying "include the group/site authorizations".

We already have a way to get access to the site-wide (config.php)
passwords, by using the '@_site_*' gropus.  Thus, to give access
to Frank plus everyone who has sitewide edit permissions, one should
be able to do

    id:Frank @_site_edit

We don't have an equivalent mechanism for getting access to group
authorizations, but perhaps it wouldn't be too hard to add 
something like "@_group_*" permissions to be able to grab things
from a group.

Stepping back to a slightly larger viewpoint, I'm still not entirely
happy with the permissions syntax we have now.  It "works", but
it's not always easy to work with, and we run the risk of coming
up with too many specialized notations (e.g., the "++" notation
proposed here).  Before adding too many more specifiers onto the
existing system, I'm hoping to come up with a cleaner overall
design.  And being able to control permissions of all pages
from a single location (e.g. config.php, Site.AuthUser, or a
similar wiki page) is still on my roadmap.

Thanks!

Pm