[Tux4kids-tuxtype-dev] Tuxtype paths

[David Bruce]

Hi Matt,

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 8:22 AM, Matthew McSpadden
<webmaster at anvilsmithtech.com> wrote:
>> In Windows, the word list editor in 1.8.0 relies on "wide-open"
>> security settings (i.e. C:\Program Files being user-writable), which
>> is common in the real world but not good practice - so we have been
>> working on fixing those issues as well.
>
> Just checking to see if you were planning to try putting the word lists in
> say C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Tuxtype or
> something.

Yes, something along those lines, although my knowledge of Windows
system administration is minimal.  Ideally, we want a location that is
readable by all users, but only writeable by users with greater
privileges (e.g. writeable by the teacher but not by the students).  I
would assume that the "All Users" location might commonly be set up
this way.

In *nix, the FHS/LSB way would be to put shared modifiable data in
/var/games/tuxtype and have the word list directory belong to a
"tux4kids" group.  Then the teacher would have to be a member of the
tux4kids group to modify the word lists.

If we want to have data that can be modified by any user of tuxtype
(like a high score list), the traditional way is to have the tuxtype
binary be setgid for the group that owns the highscore file.  But some
distros are deprecating setuid/setgid binaries due to security
concerns - openSUSE has told me that we would instead need to have a
daemon program that handles all modifications of shared data.  That
really sounds like overkill to me - the irony is that most elementary
classroom computers are set up with no security at all.  It's not like
we are adding online banking features to tuxtype.

> I can see benefits on a windows network of putting the word lists
> in a specific users folder, but probably the greatest usability will be in
> the all users folder. Also for forward compatibility Vista and Windows 7
> have the application data in a different place. I don't know if it is
> possible to specify two different paths depending on the version of the OS.

I know basically nothing about Windows programming, but I would think
that their API would provide functions that return the paths to
commonly used locations.

Best,

David