Alan Boba wrote: > I've read through the explanations and understand what you're saying. I > guess for me that leaves the question of why not create a UI artifice of > 'read only' that would be understood by the average user? It seems the > effect could be achieved with signing but using different UI actions. I > don't believe the average user understands that signing would enable them to > detect if changes are made. However getting a Word document back that > doesn't prompt for the 'read only' password when opened makes it immediately > apparent that something has changed.
Signing isn't something you can use without understanding what you are doing. You must create a signature first. So there is no way to hide this functionality behind something and IMHO it would be wrong also. But perhaps I didn't understand completely what you suggested? > > I've discovered the Writer interface has a visible indicator whether or not > a file is signed. It's in the message bar at the bottom of the application > window. For an unsigned document it is just an empty gray box. And signed or > unsigned it is tiny. Perhaps it could be made more prominent somehow and, > for unsigned documents, rather than being empty an appropriate status > message might be displayed. > > I'm persisting with the idea, though it's now clear the name 'read only' > isn't appropriate, because of how I've seen the feature used with Word in > the office environments I've been in. Also it seemed the poster who wanted > to know how to do read only, and who got me started on this thread, was > really desperate to understand how to make read only happen in Writer. I > think at this point they believe they have no way of implementing 'read > only' when in fact there is a more robust feature available, signing. I still understand why "Tools-Options-Security" is not enough: it creates a document that is opened read-only and so is protected against inadvertent changes. Can somebody explain me what is wrong with that (except that it does not exactly what you have in Word)? Expecially if you consider that the password "protection" like in Word can be circumented even by a kid? Ciao, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
