[Typo3-dev] Re: The future of Typo3

[Daniel Hinderink [TYPO3]]

Hi Michael,

>> Again, I agree that a more complete, rather than generic (?) concept is
>> needed. I am for it because it is needed, however I do not draw the same
>> conclusions, like one table for all users, etc.
>>  
>> 
> I may be a little slow, but it seems that I have completely missed the
> reason why separating the two kinds of users is supposed to be a good
> idea. What I have heard so far is:
> 
>   * Sheer volume. There may be thousands of front end users and only a
>     few back end users. Finding the back end users becomes difficult.

Not the worst of all points.

>   * Security. Putting the two kinds of users in different tables
>     provides extra security.

We all know that this is just one paramter.

>   * Purposes/separation. The two kinds of users will almost never
>     overlap and are used for entirely different purposes.

That's mostly true in real life business. There are may be less than 5% of
industries mingling visitors and users, and mostly this setup is really only
needed because one wishes to downsize the complexity for what would be pure
editors (=backend users) in specail cases.

> 
> I don't subscribe to any of theese standpoints. Which ones do you
> subscribe to, and have I missed some?

I have hoped to argue on a more theoretical level. Revel, I am going to get
even more airy-fairy now.
Well you might have missed this:

> On the general notion of creating a symbiotic frontend and backend user
> concept, I am less enthusiastic about this.
> The main reason is that the backend users and groups will have some fairly
> static range of settings to make, basically the ones we have today, plus
> backend menu and settings thereof and of course content types.
> 
> The frontend users logic is different: users might have access, own a record
> or some other association with a function or a record, but the form and
> content will vary most widely.
> Therefore the rather thin definition of the FE-User (basically the id) and the
> notion of attaching information about rights and ownerships to
> records themselves, is much more flexible and extensible.

Please excuse for now, if I don't provide the bridge between your mode of
argumentation and mine, but here is my argument restated again in a more
abstract manner:

In terms of mathematical logic this means, that there are two places in our
equation eligible for being constants, or being challenged in this sense by
attaching attributes to either the actors (users) or the objects (records).
The question is: to which object in our formula do we attach variety, which
of those is more likely to produce systematically less variety, the frontend
(to infinty and beyond) or the backend (welcome to Kasper-land).

Sorry to restate the obvious, but for the sake of completing my case:
The more attributal variety an object theoretically carries, the less it can
possibly become a constant. If two decriptory types of a semantically shared
source (the user) differ substantially (!) that is the time to accept a
fork.

And even more sorry for being so theoretical. I hope it still is
decypherable.

Cheers

daniel



-- 
TYPO3 - get.content.right

Daniel Hinderink
Marketing, Press Relations, Strategy
http://www.typo3.com