pinentry hide/show button

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

On Thu 2015-05-07 14:13:00 -0400, Neal H. Walfield wrote:
> At Thu, 07 May 2015 18:40:14 +0200, Werner Koch wrote:
>> For long passphrases and if you are anyway working out of sight of
>> cameras it is convenient to actually see what you are typing.  Thus a
>> hide/show button for password entries is desirable.  What do you think
>> of a toggle button to the right of the entry field?
>> 
>> The patch below implements this for the GTK pinentry.  It does not
>> actually work but I would like to get an opinion on the behaviour:
>> ("***" = hidden, "abc" - visible).
>> 
>>  https://wiki.gnupg.org/ScratchWK
>> 
>> or
>> 
>>  https://gnupg.org/scratch/pinentry-hidden.png
>>  https://gnupg.org/scratch/pinentry-reveal.png
>
> This should be:
>
>   https://gnupg.org/scratch/pinentry-revealed.png
>                                            ^^
>
> I think the icons are backwards.  The ***s should be shown when the
> password is revealed and abc should be shown when the password is
> hidden.  (I.e., the button should show you what you get when you
> click.)

In other dialog boxes (e.g. whatever displays the dialog box for wifi
passwords on a GNOME installation) it is displayed as a checkbox
immediately under the password field titled "show password" or
something:

  +====================================================+
  |                                                    |
  | Enter password: [______________________________]   |
  |                   [ ] show password                |
  |                                                    |
  |                                 [ OK ]  [ Cancel ] |
  +----------------------------------------------------+

> I think it is important that the button not be in the tabbing order to
> prevent accidentally selecting it.

I have mixed feelings about this.  If it's not in the tabbing order, how
do i select it without a mouse?  Can we guarantee an accelerator key?

> Alternatively or in addition, it might make sense to pop up a dialog
> asking the user if she really wants to reveal her password.

a dialog going from hide->show sounds vaguely acceptable (though a
little bit annoying).  please don't do a dialog in the show->hide
direction, of course!

           --dkg