Re: Proposal for inclusion in desktop: gnome-screensaver

[William Jon McCann <mccann jhu edu>]

Hi JP,

JP Rosevear wrote:
> I think its wrong to assume the face stuff will be used everywhere and
> then to feature it prominently, essentially forcing it to be used or to
> get a meaningless (large) abstract person all the time

The large, and fuzzy abstract person is not used in the latest (0.0.17) 
version.  I have been surprised at how many people dislike goatees.

So, the face images will only be used if available.  This is consistent 
with the GDM face browser.

It might also be nice to have a mechanism for vendors and sysadmins to 
brand the unlock dialog.

> >  * Center user's name instead of using a tabular layout for 
> > username/password fields
> >  * Don't show the stock lock icon 
>
> We use tabular in lots of other places.

Which is partly why I had it that way initially.  I'll try to explain 
why I changed my mind after considering Matthew's proposal.

We don't use use a tabular layout in GDM which is what we should be 
consistent with.  We don't use it in GDM in part because PAM drives the 
UI and there won't necessarily be a password prompt.  I have heard from 
a few Sun developers who would like to make PAM drive the unlock dialog 
in a similar way.  For example, in a smart card enabled environment 
there might not be a password prompt at all.  That would be really 
sweet.  As an aside: I despise passwords - my screen should know I'm me.

If we don't have a password prompt the tabular layout doesn't make as 
much sense.

The tabular layout is clean but perhaps too clinical or technical. 
Whenever I see a tabular layout with colon delimiters I read it as if it 
were spoken in a robot voice.  I call this the robot voice heuristic.

Jon