From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Fri Mar 16 2007 - 10:20:10 CST
Jonathan Rosenne wrote:
>
> > Hans Aberg wrote:
> >
> > On 16 Mar 2007, at 00:49, Behnam wrote:
> > >
> > > The problem of Mr. Tu is a minor one, and characters to be used for
> > > logging in is not really a language issue.
> >
> > As for account name and password, I use to suggest to only use ASCII
> > letters (a-z, A-Z) and digits (0-9), as the other characters
> > may move
> > around with the keyboard mapping: as one may not know what keyboard
> > mapping is in use, and one cannot see what password one is
> > typing, it
> > can otherwise be quite difficult and frustrating to log in if the
> > keyboard mapping for some reason has changed.
>
> When the keyboard in in a non-Latin state, none of the Latin letters will
> be produced.
Isn't a good reason why the current keyboard mapping is displayed, and even
selectable with an icon, on login prompts in XP and Vista? Not sure if this
also exists in MacOSX (it's probable that there's such extension now, for
systems installed with multiple keyboard mappings) or in X11 login prompts.
Even if it's not preinstalled, there are certainly replacement tools for
login screens that allow users to see the current mapping and to select the
one that he wants to use, without having to guess the correct keys to press
time to change your old X11 login prompts to ease that, without forcing
users to login first before using the "xmodmap" tool after successful logon
or on user's home environment.
For telnet logins, the keyboard mapping is controlled by the client host
system, not by the server, so we use the client setting and this is not a
problem.
Really, I see this as a non-issue, except in old badly programmed games that
assuming that everybody has a US QWERTY keyboard.
Anyway, I still see some sites creating some games with keyboard management
based on physical keys instead of mapped keys, and explaining which key to
press without any possibility to remap them in a usable map, or describing
their functions with things like "Press Shift 2" instead of "Press @", and
refusing to honor the command when @ is only accessible through AltGr
(because they see it incorrectly as a Ctrl key, and Ctrl has another
function). Those programmers ignore all the basic rules for usability and
compatibility with other input devices...
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