[Pan-users] Re: Save attachment file permissions

[walt]

On Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:35:32 +0000, Duncan wrote:

> The thing is, however, that UUE includes the file permission field, and
> even Windows apps will need to put /something/ there.  My question would
> be what gravity puts there, and where it gets it (some config option, a
> default, asks each time, looks to see if it's an exe and adds exe perms,
> what?)...

I couldn't resist that challenge, so I installed the latest Gravity beta
on a virtual XP machine (so I can revert any bad decisions with the click
of a virtual button) and I can say with absolute conviction that my results
were ambiguous :o)

Take a look at gmane.test to see for yourself.

I created an empty linux file named uuencode (a confusing choice of names)
did a chmod +x on it, and posted it *twice* using Gravity.  The first time
using *mime* encoding, and the second time with uuencode.  (Gravity makes
it trivial to pick which one you want.)  (I used samba to make the linux
file accessible to the virtual XP machine.)  (This is my record for the
most parenthetical comments in one paragraph.)

Anyway, it took me a while to figure out that Gravity won't post an empty
attachment, so I did it again with a small text file that I did a chmod +x
on before posting.

I still found the result confusing, so just now I posted a file that I named
'705.txt' because I gave it 705 permissions -- a pretty unlikely set of perms.

I find that Gravity still posted it with 755 perms, so I think the question
is answered:  it uses 755 by default and ignores any real *ix perms.

As an aside, I found Gravity to remain based in the stone ages of Win9x:
it still installs its data/config files (like ~/.pan2) in its own binary
installation directory (C:\Program Files\Gravity\) which is a sad commentary
on the whole Windows paradigm considering that Gravity is still actively
maintained on sourceforge.net :o(

Seems like we're making little progress in the M$ world...