Encryption stuff in need of solutions

[Lamarque V. Souza]

Em Monday 23 January 2012, Marco Martin escreveu:
> On Monday 23 January 2012, Fania Bremmer wrote:
> > hmm, the only usecase where we need a "normal, non private" activity, is
> > when the user locks the screen with a private activity and doesnt insert
> > a pw - then he would be blocked on the lock screen, because of no
> > fallback. Second usecase would be the case that all activities are
> > private, then the user needs to enter these passwords to launch one
> > activity. If he doesnt enter any pw, what is displayed? Black screen?
> 
> boh, only way i see is having an activity that has just and empty and black
> containment, that pretends to be "no activity" and would be treated
> differently
> 
> no idea how to make the logic not overcomplicated and error prone, i really
> feel that as soon as there would be the concept of "no running activity"
> and/or all activities are encrypted the logic would *have* to become
> horribly more complex

	I still think we should implement my iidea from last week: "Well, best 
effort: if it is a private activity show a dialog with Ok and dismiss buttons. 
If the password is wrong, ask again and again until it is right or the user 
clicks on dismiss. The dismiss operation tries to find a non-private activity, 
if none is found then present a new dialog with "Create new activity" and 
shutdown buttons :-)" Maybe even a "back" button to allow trying to enter the 
private activity's password again.

	My idea is basically a small wizard to  guide the user in the choices 
he/she has available at the moment. We can even add an explanation text like 
"An activity is required to use this device and none is available at the 
moment. Please create a new activity." in the last dialog. We are overthinking 
a problem that does not have a good solution, PA does not work without an 
opened activity, so or we create one or we shut the device down. I think we 
should ask the user before creating a new activity, if you think otherwise 
then create the "default" activity. We can even add an explanation message in 
the middle of the activity's screen sayin why the user was logged into it, 
something like "You are logged into an default activity because all other 
activities are unavailable at the moment." There is nothing more we can do in 
my oppinion.

	Now that we are talking about passwords I realised that there is no 
simple way to change activities' passwords or recover them. We still can 
switch encryption off and then on in order to change the password, but for now 
to save the changes the user must click on the "Save changes" button, which 
closes the configuration dialog. I think switching encryption on and off 
should be immediate (not requiring click on the "Save changes" button).

-- 
Lamarque V. Souza
KDE's Network Management maintainer
http://planetkde.org/pt-br
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