Re: UI change of "Languge" selection in gdm2

[Jerry Wall <Jerry Wall Sun COM>]

> Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 15:41:19 -0800
> From: George <jirka 5z com>
> Subject: Re: UI change of "Languge" selection in gdm2
> To: Bob Doolittle <Robert Doolittle Sun COM>
> Cc: Chookij Vanatham <chookij mpkmail eng sun com>, gdm sunsite dk
> MIME-version: 1.0
> Content-disposition: inline
> Delivered-to: mailing list gdm sunsite dk


> 2) DoS is now possible.  If on a system I switch to Bengali or Chinese,
> and then leave the terminal (assuming I'm in a country where most people
> don't speak Bengali), nobody will be able to use the terminal without
> restarting the greeter somehow.  This can be somewhat avoided by resetting
> the language after a period of inactivity to the system language.  Obviously
> this is still an issue nowdays, since my login will be in Bengali.  Plus I
> could also screw with the session that the next person uses.  So it would be
> desirable to reset ALL settings after a period of inactivity.
> 
> Overall it doesn't seem like such a high priority for me.  IMO this should 
be
> better handled by setup once the user session starts.  Perhaps gnome-session
> could ask for language on first boot.  Systems with many users in many
> different languages is a rare occurance IMO.  Of course if someone submits a
> patch that 1) is not persistent and 2) addresses both issues above.
> 
> Obviously since I'm of the opinion that even the current UI is a little too
> much crack (as language selection doesn't seem to me something to be handled
> by gdm) I'll be frowning upon any changes that propose to make that UI even
> more complex.


In our shared server environments, we have found that having the
user select their greeter language is beneficial. Inside Sun, we have
some servers that support populations of users with multiple languages
in real production. Even in the computer industry where English literacy
is very common, we feel that delivering all the user experience in native 
languages is very important. This is one of the areas that really generates
a large amount of emotion since language is a significant portion of 
people's cultural identities. 

I do grant the denial of service issue can be real, getting a greeter
in Russian, Arabic or some other language can be quite confusing
especially if you do not have the greeter menu locations memorized.
The best defence that we have come up with is to reap idle sessions
that have been disconnected.


--Jerry Wall