Re: [Usability] GDM

[Owen Williams <ywwg usa net>]

On Tue, 2005-10-11 at 15:51 +0200, Martin Soto wrote:
> Hi Tuomas,
> 
> On Mon, 2005-10-10 at 21:46 +0000, Tuomas Kuosmanen wrote:
> ...
> > Yeah, but this is just because the TTY has limitations - you dont have
> > "form fields" in the same sense in a TTY - it has to ask one thing at a
> > time. There is really no reason to do the same limitation on a graphical
> > login.
> > 
> > Similarly I see no reasons why we just couldnt show both fields and even
> > a button to click, either from a usability or an artistic standpoint. It
> > can look just fine either way. Plus now that AFAIK the KDE login manager
> > can use the same themes, it would make life easier for theme maintainers
> > too. If that makes users life easier as well, what the heck. Let's do
> > it.
> 
> As far as I understand it, there's a big technical problem: the
> Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) library. PAM makes it possible
> for a system administrator to define the policy used to authenticate
> users. So, it may be that a password is asked for, but it may be that a
> fingerprint or retinal scanner is used, or a card reader, or a one-time
> password module or some combination of them all.

But certainly there could be a workaround for the standard case -- GDM
could show both fields, and when the focus switches to the second field
it can check with PAM about what to ask for.  If PAM wants a regular
password, gdm does nothing and lets the person type the value.  If not,
GDM can then ask instead for a fingerprint or whatever.  It should be
possible to at least fake the concept of two fields shown at once even
if the backend is doing something different.

owen williams