touch-packages team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Password fields often used to use asterisk * characters. This became
less appropriate over time, for two reasons. First, more complex
password requirements meant that people sometimes use real asterisks in
their passwords, so displaying the first character typed as an asterisk
could be confusing or alarming. And second, more and more user
interfaces used fonts that were designed for (or at least variations of
fonts designed for) other media, where asterisks were expected to be
small footnote markers rather than large multiplication/programming
symbols. Asterisks became too hard to see.

Here we have the second problem recurring. The Ubuntu font has a bullet
character that is designed for bulleted lists, which makes it
uncomfortably small for telling whether you have typed the expected
number of characters in your password. This is a non-trivial problem for
something like a SIM PIN or a PUK code, where if you enter the wrong
code too many times your phone becomes semi-useless.

I think the ideal solution would be to patch the relevant
toolkits/themes so that password fields use U+26AB "medium black circle"
⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫ rather than the bullet ••••••••. If that is not practical, a
second choice would be to change the Ubuntu font to use the em bullet
Vincent mentions rather than the en bullet.

** Summary changed:

- Default password field character ••• is small
+ [1 mod] Default password field character ••• is small

** Changed in: ubuntu-font-family
       Status: Triaged => Confirmed

-- 
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Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to ubuntu-themes in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/615375

Title:
  [1 mod] Default password field character ••• is small

Status in Ubuntu Font Family:
  Confirmed
Status in “ubuntu-themes” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  A. At a graphical Ubuntu terminal, enter "gksudo whatever" or "pkexec gedit" (without quotes). Or if you aren't on Ubuntu:
  B. In a Web browser's address field, enter
  data:text/html,<input type=password style="font-family:Ubuntu" value="12345">

  The bullet chars displayed when you're typing a password on every
  dialog which asks you for a password (i.e. GDM or gksudo) is too
  small, definitely smaller than the DejaVu one. IMHO this is an
  usability issue, because it's hard to see how many characters I typed.

  As I said before, this isn't a problem when using DejaVu or Bitstream
  Vera fonts.

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