[Patch] #29984 Change file permission using octal numbers

[Alexander Kellett]

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