Re: [Usability] Use circles in password field

[William Jon McCann <mccann jhu edu>]

Hi,

Calum Benson wrote:
> On 21 Feb 2006, at 22:54, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>
> > On Feb 22, 2006, at 6:22 AM, William Jon McCann wrote:
> >
> > > ...
> > > Any chance we can get a line added to the HIG "Text Entry Fields"  
> > > Guidelines that says something like:
> > >
> > > * A text entry that is used for requesting a password from the  user 
> > > should hide the contents of the entry by using a black circle  
> > > (Unicode 0x25cf) for each character.  Example:
> > >    gtk_entry_set_visibility (entry, FALSE);
> > >    gtk_entry_set_invisible_char (entry, 0x25cf);
> > > ...
> >
> >
> > This seems like something that should Just Work in GTK (that is,  
> > black dots should be the *default* character in a password field),  
> > and that should therefore be out of scope of the HIG.
>
>
> Yep, I'd second that.  A bug against gtk sounds like the right course  
> of action here...

Actually, it gets more interesting.

It isn't quite as I said.  XP uses 0x25CF and OS X uses 0x2022.

Fedora patches gtk+ to use 0x2022.

Also:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=83935
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307304

What's a poor app writer to do?

Thanks,
Jon