[Thunar-dev] The new permission UI

[Benedikt Meurer]

Stefan Stuhr wrote:
>>Ok, ditched the ACL aware permissions editor for now (Thunar 1.0 won't
>>include ACL support either), and replaced it with a simplified, Aqua
>>Finder-like one, which supports recursive permissions (based on a
>>suggestion found in the Ubuntu wishlist for Nautilus).
>>
>>http://www.foo-projects.org/~benny/tmp/thunar-permissions-chooser-20060108.png
> 
> That's certainly more simple. The "Allow this file to _run as a program"
> check box, does it set the Execute permission only for the owner?

Right now, all exec bits are set, which is pretty ok for a desktop file
manager (how many binaries do the average desktop user own, that have
only one of the exec bits set... pretty close to zero). My initial idea
was to couple the exec bit with the read  bit, tho, but that was kinda
confusing in the end. I'll look at that again later, probably.

> Also, I don't see any UI for setting recursive permissions. Do you mean
> that it do recursive permissions by default, when setting permissions
> for directories? If yes, are you sure that is wise?

There's a preference for that ("misc-recursive-permissions"), which can
be either "ask" (in which case the user will be asked everytime whether
to apply folder permissions recursively), "always" and "never". The
default is "ask", so the first time you change permissions of a folder,
you'll definitely be asked what to do, and so it's again up to the user
to mess it up (you can always reset your choice using the preferences
dialog).

> Also, maybe the Advanced button/dialog should still be used, for setting
> GID, UID and sticky, and possible for setting execute for directories
> and group and others. If implemented in the right way, it may minimize
> the amount of complaints from advanced users, while still being simple
> for not so advanced users.

Yeah, I'm not yet sure about the Advanced bits (sticky, suid, sgid).

Concerning the directory exec bit: Since it doesn't make sense (for the
desktop user case) to make a directory "--x", "-w-", "r--" or "rw-",
there is no way to set the directory exec bit directly. It'll be set if
either read or write are set, else if both read and write are unset,
exec is unset as well (ok, there's still the useless case "-wx", but
that's atleast only one of five useless choices left).

> Stefan

Benedikt