How do I share files between users on the same machine?

Question

I tried using /Users/shared to share files between myself (Admin user) and another user on the machine (Standard user). Whenever I put a file or a folder into said directory permissions are 755 for directories and 644 for files, my umask is 0022. The files and directories belong to my user and the group staff. This means I can read and write and others can read. If I do the same using the other users account. Permissions are 700 and 600 respectively. (Owner is the other user and group is staff.) Strangely the other users umask is 0022, too.
The result is, that all directories and files I create with my account (Admin user) are readable to every other user on the machine, whereas all directories and files the other user (Standard user) creates are not readable for anyone else. I can easily rectify this using the Terminal and chmod and/or chown, but it is a pain having to do this, since I also need to forcefully restart the Finder App for it to notice the changed permissions.
Ideally I'd like all directories in /Users/Shared to have permissions 777 and all files 666 no matter which user created, copied or moved them to said location. I think this could possibly be done using applescript and shellscripting and the folder action hook. So far my attempts to find such a script on the net or/and write it myself have failed. I'd be grateful for any hints how I:
a) write and setup such a script
b) accomplish what I try to do (share files and folders on the same machine) in another possibly more Mac way
Kind regards
David

Answer 1

The following AppleScript will recursively descend the directory tree and change the items to your modes:
<pre style="
font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
font-size: 10px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 5px;
border: 1px solid #000000;
width: 720px; height: 340px;
color: #000000;
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title="this text can be pasted into the Script Editor">
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
repeat with some_item in these_items
ProcessStuff from some_item
end repeat
end adding folder items to
to ProcessStuff from SomeItem
processes items contained in SomeItem, recursively descending the directory tree
parameters - SomeItem [mixed]: an item containing the items to process
returns nothing
set SomeItem to SomeItem as text
set FileInfo to (info for SomeItem as alias)
if (folder of FileInfo) and not (package folder of FileInfo) then -- a folder (not a package)
do shell script "chmod 666 " & quoted form of POSIX path of SomeItem
-- do shell script "chown root:staff " & quoted form of POSIX path of SomeItem user name "me" password "mypassword" with administrator privileges
try -- to get items in the folder
tell application "Finder" to set SubFolder to (items of folder SomeItem)
on error
return {}
end try
repeat with SubItem in SubFolder -- process the sub items
ProcessStuff from SubItem
end repeat
else -- a file
do shell script "chmod 777 " & quoted form of POSIX path of SomeItem
-- do shell script "chown root:staff " & quoted form of POSIX path of SomeItem user name "me" password "mypassword" with administrator privileges
end if
return
end ProcessStuff
</pre>
You shouldn't need to change the ownership, so I commented out the chown shell script since this would need to be run as a super user. You can run a shell script with administrator privileges, but in order to be used by a standard user you will need to provide the appropriate user name and password in the script, which might not be a good idea - note that the folder action script will need to be attached in all accounts that you want to change the permissions, which means that it would need to be accessible to those accounts.