Re: [cms-users] Enhanced CMS 0.02

[Roger B. <ro...@sa...>]

Alexandre Gravel wrote:
> 
> Hi Roger,
> 
> We are very well alive and up to work on CMS 0.03.

Great!

[--snip--]

> Roger, feel free to forward me the code you have, even send it to the
> cms-devel mailing list, join in, we are never enough at working on those
> projects. The more input and suggestions we get, the better the end
> product can get.


OK - Well, I have set up a demo cms and placed a tarball of the demo
site (cms-demo.tgz) there. I'll risk running as-is for next couple of
days in case anyone wants to take a look.

The changes are mostly cosmetic but might help to explain the following:

> 2. How about having a buttton to  "reserve" and "unreserve" files in
> addition to current "checkout" and "available". This would allow files
> to be better protected. For example, a file could be "reserved" by
> default when uploaded. It would be better still if a file owner could
> make a file "read only" but the "reserve" option would be easy to  do?

William McKee wrote:
I'm not sure I understand the need for a reserve function but haven't
implemented CMS in a production environment yet so may just be
overlooking the obvious. At any rate, if this option is added, it should
be optional to have it "reserved" by default.

Unless the file is reserved, then any user may (IMHO) too easily delete.
If the file is auto "reseved" on upload, then this offers some
protection against accidental delete?

Alexandre Gavel wrote:
It would also be pretty to implement the read-only flag through a
thisfile.doc.readonly control file. I'll have to add that to my
wishlist. The thing is though that since we do not have a definite
authentification module, it would hard to determine who can and who
can't set the readonly flag on a given file. Matti, how about having an
admin password and a user password for the desktops? That could set some
flags and allow more or less options to the user.


What I was thinking was that each user should be the administrator of
their own file(s); Whoever first uploads a file becomes the
administrator of that file? Currently I think this is flagged by using
email address? If so, then the email address is already functioning as a
kind of insecure "password"? Maybe that could be made more secure and be
given extended functionality?

> 3. Have you thought about using RCS  for revision control? I think this
> would be easy to do ( you could take a look at one way that is done at
> http://www.twiki.org/ ).

William McKee wrote:
Similar opinion here. I like the idea but I don't want to be forced to
use RCS or CVS. 

Understood.... but I think RCS may be OK - I think it is almost
universally distributed and widely used as a "simple", time saving and
robust " plugin"... even the Python FaqWiz uses it as a plugin... and I
doubt they'd have taken that decision lightly :^)

William McKee wrote:
Furthermore, there's a serious problem with storing binary files in CVS,
IMHO. CVS (and I presume RCS is the same) doesn't do diffs between
binaries. Thus each time a file is added, the entire file is added. If
you're supporting users who share large PowerPoint presentations or Word
documents, you're going to eat up some serious diskspace and,
potentially, incur substantial additional storage costs.

Agreed - I guess I was looking at this as being primarily for purpose of
backup security (as in the sense of a primarily file distribution - not
primarily a devlopment environment).  Wouldn't that require a separate
VCS over and above what CMS is designed to provide?

Anyhow, I do agree with all your comments and I'm glad you mentioned
storage space issue - is there any intention of setting simple cms user
quotas?


You're welcome take a look at a test setup here (I'll place code there
also - see "cms-demo.tgz" ).

 http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au/cgi-bin/cms/index.cgi?login=1


Demo login details:

   Folder name: desk1
      Password: client1

One other thing while I think of it: Every time a significant change is
made, although in general I don't like "push", it would be nice if cms
auto-refreshed the client's browser display (say after a new file upload
etc)?

R.