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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: feature idea - feedback wanted
From:       Paul Campbell <paul () chromatic ! com>
Date:       1999-02-14 19:28:20
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On Sun, 14 Feb 1999, Michael Reiher wrote:
 
>Paul Campbell wrote:
> 
>> I think there is a correctb place for these sorts of things - it's in the
>> control panel - but what we also need is a mechanism where
>> things are automatically included/left out of the control panel
>> depending on whether or not the user is able to change them
>> or not.

>I think it4s not good to use KControlCenter for this. There should be an 
>extra application for sys admin tasks. I fact it can be a modified  
>KContrlCenter but with another name and it should go into the kdeadmin  
>package. What about KSAT = KDE System Administration Terminal? KControl  
>should only contain things that any user may change.
>Would be cool if both could be CORBAized to allow remote control them,
>e.g. for setup wizards.

No - I disagree - there's an old (computer) saying - there are 3 nice numbers,
0, 1 and infinity - and I think there are 3 numbers of control panels - 0, 1
and infinity (in this case I guess 0 and infinity really mean the same thing -
lots of disparate apps). I think that the control panel is THE place to "make
persistant changes to the user's environment" - whether the things being changed
are OS (or distribution) specific shouldn't be something a naive user has to
know - if they can tweek a knob it should be there, if they can't it shouldn't..
Havin to search thru N control panel apps to find the function you want 
is the wrong way to go about it 

As it is the control panel is not that Intuitive - 'panel' is an 'application'
and not a 'Desktop' control [you and I know it's a real application - but again
to the naive user it's a desktop item].

Think of it this way - a naive user doesn't know that setting the screen
background requires no privileges - but setting the system time requires
root privilege (something lacking in KDE by the way but present in most
non-unix GUIs - sadly this one is probably very OS specific).
 
Also - if you haven't coded control panel panes - it's not a single big
application, the control panel itself is just a manager that uses other
separate applications to implement the panes within it - you can easily add
panes (ie apllications) from an OS specific distribution over the top of the
existing mechanism, or potentially change it (as I suggested before) to allow
some of the pane applications to declare that they are not appropriate for this
situation (for example because the user isn't root, or because the system
resource being managed isn't present in the system etc etc)

Again an example - my kcmlaptop panel ought to be in a linux-specific
KDE distribution (an add on to the base) - and shouldn't actually appear in the
control panel unless APM  is installed in the system - some features may be
grayed out or missing unless the user is root, or /usr/bin/apm is setuid root -
obviously these sets of criteria are too complex for a generic control panel
app to support, but if we have OS/distribution specific addons to KDE and a
mechanism to allow a panel to opt out from being displayed in the control panel 
the app can do the rest.

    Paul

PS: I think I'm going to go off and write a time setting panel - probably just
execing 'date' to do the job - sadly the user will have to be root to use it

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