LightDM-KDE

[Harald Sitter]

On Friday 10 June 2011 13:02:57 David Edmundson wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 2:19 AM, Harald Sitter <apachelogger at ubuntu.com> 
wrote:
> > On Thursday 09 June 2011 20:57:04 David Edmundson wrote:
> >> For the KDE side of things I intend to have a QML powered greeter
> >> engine. This will display any QML file as the greeter, and provide all
> >> the linking to the LightDM daemon and general models and such.
> >> 
> >> This enables anyone to build a login theme without any compiling, and
> >> makes it completely safe for the end user.
> >> I've outlined my goals/design/reasoning in more detail here:
> >> http://static.davidedmundson.co.uk/lightdm_goals.txt
> > 
> > Sounds awesome.
> > I'd like to propose two goals though:
> > a) accessible
> > b) scalibility (should work well with ldap setups with >10 users etc.)
> 
> Completely agreed.
> 
> Part b should mostly be being handled by the LightDM daemon (Robert's
> part) so if it's good enough for Ubuntu it will work for us.

Right, however it also needs UI considerations. Like the theme sheytan 
presented will entirely break with many users. This needs to be handled in the 
UI/QLDM. Like having two separate greater themes, one that scales and one that 
does not. If a theme creator does not provide one of the two one could just 
fall back to the default.

Ideally I suppose this would actually be automatically detected. I reckon a 
user list like the one in sheytan's mockup could be checked for too many 
entries to fit on screen (scrollbar?) so that the greeter automatically 
switches to the scalable version.

However this might have awkward side effects, like if people switch around 
resolution alot, they get different experiences every time. An example here 
would be if you have a laptop and a dual screen setup at home. Depending on 
how this is handled it might well be that then resolution for KDM differs 
greatly between dual-screen and laptop-only.
So, perhaps the automation is a bad idea. But definitely a config option should 
be provided.

Simplest approach is to just have a scalable versioned theme/greeter that can 
be selected. Not too nice though as a theme creator who wants to provide both 
experiences needs to create two themes. ;)

> >> There is also a shiny picture of what my demo greeter looks like here:
> >> http://static.davidedmundson.co.uk/lightdm_2.png. Note the use of
> >> plasma widgets.
> >> It's not finished, but it shows what I'm doing. I imagine kubuntu will
> >> want to Kubuntu-ify it a bit. If anyone has any designs let me know.
> > 
> > Mockup by sheytan: http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/7461/basegi.jpg
> > I believe this would be a good default. Something I never liked about
> > the
> > current KDM default is that you cannot click somewhere to select your
> > user, but instead had to know your user name *eeek*.
> > To that extent the user name login box perhaps should be non-editable if
> > you selected a user and only become editable on click. Just a random
> > thought though.
> 
> A users list is next on the agenda. All the stuff is in the library
> and engine to do it. Should be done by Tuesday.

Awesome \o/

> >> This is in development here:
> >> http://quickgit.kde.org/?p=scratch%2Fdavidedmundson%2Flightdmqmlgreete
> >> r.git& a=summary There is a demo theme here:
> >> http://quickgit.kde.org/?p=scratch%2Fdavidedmundson%2Flightdmdemogreet
> >> er.git &a=summary
> >> 
> >> It requires the latest master of lightdm to compile (lp:lightdm).
> > 
> > Could someone get this in a PPA please or perhaps the neon people could
> > get weekly builds going?
> 
> Not me, I hate packaging. It's waaaaaaaaaay too difficult.

You'll be glad to hear that there are efforts going on to make it as simple as 
running one command ;)

http://pkgme.net/

> > As for the comments: you should beware of how important they are. They
> > neither reflect common opinion nor particularly technical reasoning
> > (especially the ones on your post from a quick glance). The only two
> > valuable concerns I noticed were: supreme PAM support and enterprise
> > readiness. Both things that should entirely be secured before going
> > anywhere with LightDM IMHO.
> > 
> >> Moving forwards, I think I should take discussion about KDE and
> >> LightDM off the kubuntu ML and maybe onto the LightDM ML? I'm not sure
> >> if I'm bugging people. I also need some opinions from you and to get
> >> some more people on board.
> > 
> > If you feel it makes more sense there... Having stuff here is not
> > particularly distrubing though, especially since we get free status
> > updates that way :P
> > 
> > What sort of people do you need?
> 
> I know from the past that one-man projects tend to fail eventually, if
> I get busy or die in a catastrophic accident there needs to be people
> who can continue the work. Mostly I just need people to follow the
> development to tell me if I'm doing something stupid.

IMHO the best solution here would be to make it at least a KDE extragear 
project, if not workspace. A lot of people watch commits and tell you when you 
are doing something wrong (I prefer pizza and telly though :P).

> Also accessibility is on our goal list (as of now) I know nothing
> about that. What stuff is important in a login manager?
>  - Choosing large fonts?
>  - Screen readers?
> 
> Does this need to happen at run time, or can it be in the systemsettings
> module?

Ubuntu Accessiblity will know, but I think that this sounds liek a sufficent 
approach. Of course having a screen reader is already tricky enough ^^