Better description of functionality

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I have updated the description.

I like the idea of this!

I think you are slightly confusing things in your description wrt computed field (if I haven't misunderstood). I haven't played with it so I might well be making some wrong assumptions here.

Computed field is a field type. This isn't. So it's fundamentally different and it supports a number of field types.

A use I'd have for it would be to use it with rules (http://drupal.org/project/rules) to populate a field automagically without having to do anything additional to hide it from the edit form. The benefit over computed field would be that as far as everything else it is concerned it would just be the underlying type of field with all the automatic benefits that would have. (In the past I've hidden CCK input fields using rules. This should make that largely unnecessary.)

Why not use the "content permissions" module? It is already integrated in the CCK. It allows to enable the view and the edit permissions of every CCK field.

FiNex,

I find many instances where I want NOBODY to edit the field, not even admins. So this makes more sense than permissions.

I understand. Thanks

FiNex,
An example where I've hidden a field using rules is for a gmap macro built using a bit of php when the node is saved, and using bits from other fields in the node. It's a simplistic approach that works fine - I couldn't see how to simply make a computed field be treated as a gmap macro for display purposes.

But the field should never be visible in the form. Nothing to do with permissions - it would never make sense to type anything into it.

I guess the real answer would be to have computed fields masquerade as any type you want, but I just wanted something working there and then and that did it. Being able to just set it to be hidden would remove the need to hide it separately in the way I did.