From kde-core-devel Sat May 17 10:48:01 2003 From: Alexander Kellett Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 10:48:01 +0000 To: kde-core-devel Subject: Re: [Patch] #29984 Change file permission using octal numbers X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-core-devel&m=105316847424941 On Fri, May 16, 2003 at 10:14:59AM -0600, Aaron J. Seigo wrote: > o Scott is correct in thinking that most who do not already know octal > permission values will see it as line noise. no, the majority of people will > not notice that clicking write adds 2 to a certain digit in the pattern. the human brain has no problem with automatically ignoring information it can't understand. its the complexity/size of the dialog that should be in question, not the addition of a few "guru" fields. > o It's poor UI design in that it connects one widget (The line edit) with a > set of other widgets with no visible corelation. sure, changing values of one > set of widgets affects the value of another, but since this is done by an > internal mathematical transformation, it doesn't provide a stronger linkage. well, good labelling would solve this completely. you can't possibly strengthen the link in this case. > o It doesn't provide any new information or even a substantially better way > to access the information that is there. Since it *mirrors* information, > rather than presents unique information, the odds are high that it will be > confusing for some, innexplicable for others, a novelty for others and useful > for remarkably few. well. i know for certain that plenty of kde users will be reading about unix permissions anyway, given thats thats there platform in any case. in fact, in a fair few cases i'm sure that they will be asked by a tutorial / howto to change the permissions of a given file to "0755". frankly this "mirrored" info is gonna be damn to useful to such people. or isn't konqi meant to be a partial shell replacement anymore? anyways. yay for a completely redesign as long as it also incorporates this useful addition. Alex