[cap-talk] Web Powerbox use case: editing wikis (was: Granting access to web services)

[Mark Seaborn]

Another use case for Web Powerbox occurred to me:  editing wiki pages.

Web Powerbox can be viewed as a generic authority amplification mechanism.

In the cases we have discussed so far, the web app supplies a service type
string, and the powerbox can give back an object (as a web-key).  But it
could also take an object reference, and give back a more powerful object.
This could be used to go from a shared, read-only view of a wiki page to an
editable view of a wiki page.

Instead of requesting a service type such as "image file" or "payment", a
read-only wiki page could request a service type such as
"wikipedia.orgaccount".  Suppose I visit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo.  The "Edit" button could open a powerbox
listing Wikipedia accounts (of which you would usually expect to have 0 or
1, but >1 is possible).  Selecting an account would go to an editable view
of the page in which edits are logged in the page's history using the name
of the chosen account.  Hence it would not be necessary to log in to the
site using ambient credentials such as cookies.

I'm pretty sure the issue of how to amplify read-only capabilities has come
up in the past on cap-talk, but I can't find a reference.

Mark
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.eros-os.org/pipermail/cap-talk/attachments/20100214/0a511dfd/attachment.html