Shoutbox

Matty,

I had the same idea to make such a plugin for a long time (well, since the request was made on this forum) and I still are going to make one. This isn't stealing ideas tbh as the request for this plugin was made publicly...

But I lack the time to create any plugin and this one wouldn't be on the top of my list though. I had a big thought about it before and since you're creating the plugin (first?), I'll share my thoughts:

You can easly fix the possible security issue (anti-war) with the following idea:

When someone send your PC the shutdown command (with the right optional password of course), a dialog will always pop up on the local computer to ask if you want to cancel it or not. After X seconds the dialog will dissapear automaticly and the PC will be shut down.

So, the dialog would work in the same way as the start-up menu in Windows or the personalised away dialog in MsgPlus.

In other words: if you forget to turn off the PC, you can remotely invoke the procedure. The dialog will be presented at your PC, but since there is nobody to cancel it, your pc will be shutdown. If the shutdown is invoked by some person who knows the password, you can cancel away the dialog and remove that person from the acceptlist.



Options on the dialog could be:
text: "Your PC will be shut down in X seconds."
option: [o] remove the contact  from the allow list.
button: configure
button (default): cancel shutdown

The option "ignore contact" is only enabled when you've selected "for contacts I select" in the configuration dialog and that contact is on the acceptlist.

The configure dialog would hold two lists: your contactlist and a list for people who can shutdown your pc. So, it's similar to the auto-accept list from msgplus. Also the (individual) password and the dialog time-interval can be set in the configure dialog.

The dialog time-interval has a default value of 10 seconds and has an minimum of 5 secs. This minimum value can't be set to anything lower for security reasons; you must always have some time to confirm the dialog.

The password can be set for each contact or globaly, just like the Msgplus notification sounds for signin/out. In other words, if you select "all contacts" you can set the password globaly, if you select "contacts I select" you can set a password for each individual by clicking on the contact in the allowlist.

The configuration dialog could be:

[o] enable remote shutdown

    [o] Automaticly accept remote shutdowns from all my contact.
    [o] Automaticly accept remote shutdowns from contacts I select.

    contactlist:                   acceptlist:
    +-----------+              +----------+
    |contact 1   |  add       | contact 2  |
    |contact 2   |  remove  | contact 4  |
    |contact 3   |              |                |
    |contact 4   |              |                |
    +-----------+              +----------+
                                       Password: [ _____ ]

    Cancel dialog time-interval: [ __ ]


I had many thoughts of how to implementing an ignorelist, acceptlist and individual/global passwords in 1 go and still be user-frienly. If you all want to do this then it isn't as easy at it seems. I've written some layouts and working-diagrams on some papers here, but I can't find them atm... But the acceptlist shown above in this post is a nice, short and easy alternative though.