[Zope-Coders] Towards 2.6

[Chris McDonough]

> I'm concerned that the right thing to do is still open for 
> interpretation.  Based solely on the method names, I would guess that a 
> method called getUserName() should return "Shane Hathaway", while the 
> method getId() should return something arbitrary like "501".  Neither 
> one is my login name "shane", which should be available through the 
> nonexistent method getLoginName().
> 
> Would it make sense to add getLoginName()?

I'm not sure.  If we were starting over, and we knew we wanted to
capture a descriptive username as metadata in stock user folders, I
think this makes total sense.  But if we wanted to change the existing
User implementation and still maintain backwards-compatibility, I don't
think so.  Here's why:  Descriptive user names in systems like UNIX are
typically optional.  If we make getUserName() return a long descriptive
name for the user, and if the username is nonexistent, it would make
sense to return a blank string instead of the login name...

Maybe we could add another User implementation to the core that did this
the "right way" after changing all the calls that depend on
getUserName().  Maybe even make this the default user folder type.  It
might be a bitch for 3rd-party stuff, though, and is probably
inappropriate now right before the final release.

- C