Re: Proposal for inclusion in desktop: gnome-screensaver

[William Jon McCann <mccann jhu edu>]

Hi Shaun,

Good comments.  I'll reply inline.

Shaun McCance wrote:
> * On https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ScreenSaver there's the suggestion:
>
>     ...an OS-X-like dialog shake would save having to print ugly
>     "That password was incorrect" text.
>
> I notice that you have the shake effect, but that you still have
> the "ugly" text.  Please keep it that way.  I very much doubt
> that our accessibility tools can say "the dialog is shaking its
> head 'NO' at you."

I plan to keep the text.  I've found that some people don't intuit that 
the shake means no.

> * The timeout when you type an incorrect password is very long.

Yes it is.  I found that some novice and show users weren't able to 
notice, read, and understand the error message text before the dialog 
disappeared.  It used to be quite a short timeout but I extended it 
recently.  Perhaps, I've extended it too much.

> * Same wiki page:
>
>     Use the gdm login screen for switching accounts, and tidy it up.
>
> I've long held that XP got the interaction right.  There's just one
> login screen.  Unlocking your screen is just logging back in again.
> Switching users is just logging in.
>
> Right now, we have the OS X interaction: We have a login screen
> and a separate unlock dialog.  The unlock dialog has a button to
> switch users, which takes you to another login dialog.  Ideally,
> I'd like to see an effort to make gdm the One True Login Screen,
> regardless of whether you're logging in for the first time or
> unlocking a running session.

I agree in part.  Unfortunately, it gets a bit complicated both 
technically and politically.

If user switching is not enabled then using a display manager as an 
unlock dialog doesn't make much sense.  It will involve more time and 
more user interaction to unlock the screen.  In the short term I expect 
that many vendors will ship with user switching off by default until we 
can solve all the problems with device ownership.

At the moment we can't require GDM to be present and running in order to 
lock the screen.  The vendor may use another DM or no DM at all.

We must also take care that the locked screen is never a dead end for 
the user.  This is important.  Consider what happens if the user does a 
VT switch either by using FUSA, GDM, manually by keyboard, or by 
accident.  The user will end up at someone's locked screen.  There must 
be a way for the user to get back home to their VT.

I think in the long run we can integrate FUSA, GDM, and 
gnome-screensaver better but we have some more work to do.

> * As long as we have the model we have now, the user-switching
> dialog needs love.  Right now, it displays a list of all the
> users.  The list is tall enough to accommodate about 1.2 users.
> I regularly use a machine that has hundreds of users.  That's
> not a fun list to scroll through.

Most of the time if you have a face image showing on the other page then 
you will be able to see more users at a time.

I am also in a system with hundreds of users so I understand.  You can 
use gtktreeview type-ahead find to speed up your searches.  On my system 
I can find my user name in two keypresses and one mouse click.  This is 
much faster than typing my entire username.

> * And on that note, I'm a keyboard-happy kind of person.  I'm
> a big fan of just typing my username.  I think face browsers
> are great for small home installations.  But there needs to
> be a way to type.

You are probably right.  I'll think about how to add this.

> * And on that note, there needs to be a way to disable the
> face browser entirely.  In a lot of settings, sysadmins don't
> want to show a list of all users to people who might not even
> have accounts on the machines.

The user switching is off by default.  It must be enabled by setting the 
GConf key /apps/gnome-screensaver/user_switch_enabled to TRUE.

> * You've hidden quite a lot of options.  All well and good.
> But we can't just hide things that people use, unless we've
> really provided a better system.  Case in point, I actually
> use the setting for when to lock the screen after it's blanked.
> Removing that setting annoys me, unless you make it Just Work
> so I don't need the setting anymore.

I've heard this complaint before.  I think there is another possibility 
besides adding such an option.

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=309142

> Anyway, just my 2�.  I'm glad somebody is finally tackling
> this issue.  Keep up the good work.

Thanks for the excellent questions.

Jon