Re: Private NIBs?
Re: Private NIBs?
- Subject: Re: Private NIBs?
- From: Gibbons Burke <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2002 10:52:29 -0500
At 10:50 AM -0400 8/2/02, Jim Correia wrote:
>
On Friday, August 2, 2002, at 10:08 AM, Ryan Stevens wrote:
>
>
>I doubt a user that would muck with the .nib would hassle the author about changes he/she made (or problems arising from doing so).
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Speaking from experience, yes, they will.
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Invariably, they will either not remember they made the change (especially if the change was made following someone else's instructions/patcher) or not correlate the current problems to the change that was made.
One way to deal with this "problem" would be to create a file listing the checksum values for each nib file in your application package and include that file somewhere in your app package. The application, when launched, checks the .nib checksums against the @build checksums listed in the file. If they are different, the application alerts the user, as a service to him, that the application has been improperly modified from its build state. Let them know that running the application in the modified state is possibly dangerous and explicitly contrary to the license agreement (which you will have gotten them to agree too when they installed the application). You can either prevent them from running the application at that point, have a button that sends them to the download site for a new install, or give them a "Run Anyway" choice in the dialog. (There are cases when users might have good reasons for modifying the .nibs - for example to localize the application to a language not supported by the developer.
It would be a nice service, included as part of the AppKit, to have this sort of security checking done automatically, as a way of preventing mal-ware from operating freely in the wilds on unsuspecting applications. It would strengthen the Mac's already good reputation in dealing with viruses, worms, and other mal-ware.
Gibbons Burke
The essence of liberty is not that my interests should be tolerated, but that I should tolerate yours. [Tom Stoppard, telegraph.co.uk]
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