Re: player view
In reply to Shaili (msg #22):
Possibly, but there is the problem that if you lose your GM powers then you don't have permission to impersonate another person or character. If I un-GM them and just set them to be exactly player x/character y, then I might be able to view the thread/message ok, but the ability to do anything with it afterwards might be cut off.
RPoL is (I hope) fairly secure. For example, permissions are checked when viewing the thread list, when viewing the thread, when editing an existing message or composing a new one, and also when updating/posting said message. It does not assume at any stage that you have permissions. A GM can change a persons profile at any time, and people can edit URLs or compose local versions of the forms that RPoL uses to try and bypass security.
Err, I digress. To do what is requested we (probably, I haven't looked into it indepth) have to change how the GM views a thread/message without interferring with the GM permissions.
For example, when figuring whether to display private lines, one of the first checks is "IsGM". If this is true then all PLs are displayed. This will now have to be changed to "IsGM AND NOT impersonating a character".
Further down that same PL section there is an "IsCharacter" check (which checks if the controls controls the charcter), similarly that will now have to be changed to "IsCharacter OR IsGM impersonating this character".
This all gets more (or less) complicated depending upon whether we're talking about impersonating a specific character, a specific player (which might mean more than one character), or just "character in group x".
Whether it's "previewing a message as" or "viewing a thread as" is also still to be determined. The latter seems to be better to me, but then again I don't really see much need for all this. (c;