plans for xfconf, lockdown

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On 2009/07/08 13:40, walking2go at gmx.net wrote:
> Hi, I'm not a developer but I wanted to know something about your
> (the developers) plans about the lockdown/kiosk-mode problem.
>
> As far as I saw there are still two different ways of locking: the
> "old" kiosrc method and the new xfconf method

The new xfconf method can't be the whole picture for lockdown. 
XfceKiosk works on a level of "actions" (for example, "is the user 
allowed to save the session?"), while the xfconf model only handles "can 
the user change this setting?"

I'd look at these as somewhat complementary.  You'd want to use both to 
get a full kiosk experience.  Perhaps to make things more unified, the 
XfceKiosk settings could/should be stored in xfconf, but that requires 
someone knowledgeable to take up the work.

Another option would be to replace XfceKiosk with something based on 
PolicyKit -- in the long run this might be a better idea, since you 
automatically get the benefit of being able to override the policy 
system on the spot.

> (editing the xml files
> in /etc/xdg/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/ as superuser). First,
> the editing method is a little annoying (edit those files as
> superuser, then log in as the 'restricted' user to test if the
> changes effect anything, go back to superuser, etc...)

No, you can simply run the desktop as the restricted user, edit the 
files as superuser (using sudo or su or whatever), and then kill xfconfd 
to allow the settings to take effect.

> - are the
> plannings for developing a "better" backend to easily edit those
> files?

Not to my knowledge, no.  Personally, I don't have much interest in the 
kiosk/lockdown systems.  If others want to work on this, there's nothing 
stopping them, but it's not really on my priority list at all.

> Then, it would be great if other components (like thunar,
> xfce4-panel, etc.) could be accessable through xfconf, too. What are
> your plannings about that?

I'm not sure what you mean by this.  Just that thunar and the panel 
don't store their settings in xfconf?  If that's the case, Nick's 
experimental panel in git already has some support for xfconf (though 
I'm not sure how much; he can chime in if he wants).

Thunar support is uncertain: no one is actively maintaining Thunar right 
now (Jannis is porting it to gio/gvfs, but I don't know that he cares to 
do much more than that).

> And last (maybe it should be first): The
> documentations for xfconf are very "lousy". When will them be fixed?

That's a rather un-constructive statement.  Please be more specific. 
What are you lacking?  The API documentation is complete and available 
from our website.

> My last question (has nothing to do with your developing-plans, but
> myabe you know it): what's the difference in xubuntu between the
> files in /etc/xdg/xfce4 and /etc/xdg/xubuntu/xfce4 ? Which files does
> xfce under xubuntu use for what purpose?

I have no idea.  Ask on an ubuntu/xubuntu-related list or forum.

	-brian