Re: [SM-PLUGINS] "Yellow Sticker" Plugin -- any demand?

[Juergen N. <Jue...@fu...>]

On 2013-01-22 19:30, Wm Mussatto wrote:

> I thought of motd as well, but I agree that it only helps if you don't
> need to notify people of events which will happen a couple of days in the
> future.

That is one thing. The other is, our users are largely academic people
who are paid for their research and teaching work, and not for
remembering at what time the webmail system might be unavailable in the
week after next. (We have a notification area prominently placed on the
first page of our website, but I think people rarely look at that
*before* something does not work.)

So I think it is much more effective to have a -- small, though --
display at a place where they cannot overlook it for the relevant time.

> I was going to recommend that you still look at
> putting it in via config.pl, but I though better of it.  I can see where a
> user would access the file but you wouldn't want them anywhere near
> config.pl or the files in modifies.

In my case they are not users in that sense, but my co-workers. They
have demonstrated the ability to put a file in a decumented place :-)
[1], but fiddling with the configuration of a system that you are not
familiar with is not everybody's idea of fun -- certainly not mine, for
instance.

[1] One of them follows this list, so I have to be careful what I say. ;-)

And sure, it doesn't have to be ops people doing that. If you can give
*someone* a spot in the file system with the permissions to place such a
file, they could do it without being involved in the system's operations
at all. This is not the case with our systems, as they run on servers
without user access to any of their file systems, but I could certainly
imagine such a scenario.

Now it could be interesting to combine this functionality with motd
somehow. I decided against doing that, because I wanted to make a
minimal plugin, for the sake of Doing One Thing Well and follow the KISS
principle as well as for keeping the effort quite low.

Combining the thing with motd would mean a bigger effort in
implementation and in maintenance. If someone wants to have such a
thing, I'll be happy with them re-using my code (the little there is --
it is really tiny).

BTW, a bit more polishing and I should be done with it; maybe I'll get
to it even today.

Regards, Juergen.

-- 
<Jue...@fu...> Tel. +49.30.838-50740
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