kdm-plasma question

[Shaun Reich]

So, with kdm-plasma, essentially there is 1 plasmoid which is the
basic "greeter". It's the login dialog that everyone sees on kdm.

The plasmoid controls a lot of the authentication, and is akin to old
kdm's "plugin system", whereby new PAM authentication methods could be
made (think fingerprints, and any other kind of authentication).

The thing is..the authentication needs to be used in 2 other places so
far...the shutdown dialog and the unlock widgets dialog. Both of which
require root access (well, the former only requires it if kdm has it's
settings set up to do so).

So I thought that if I could somehow get the authentication *inside*
the associated dialog, then it might make things (easier..hopefully.).
Here is an example of what I was thinking...the textbox is the
plasmoid and all outside of it is well..a qgraphicswidget.

http://imagebin.ca/view/QsdYNzKs.html

With the shutdown dialog I would want to have 2 choices laid out
linearly (horiz) which would be Plasma::IconWidgets. Then when one
option is clicked, the other option(s) fade away and all that's left
is the..for example, shutdown icon. Then the authentication(textbox)
would be to the right of it. Then there is a cancel button
(pushbutton) at the bottom right (like the ksmserver logout dialog)

The shutdown dialog, as some of you may know, will offer GRUB boot
options on the restart entry...

Would it be easiest to somehow embed the authentication plasmoid
inside said qgraphicswidget? Or would it be easier/better to let the
plasmoid handle the presentation of all of it (actually presenting the
entire unlock dialog, entire shutdown dialog, etc.) unfortunately that
leads to a duplication of Ui components to some degree -- that I'm not
fond of.

On the other hand, when the authentication type changes radically, I
really don't know how well the layouts could respond..if we go the
embedding route. Because the fingerprint system for example, is a lot
different than the regular text entry authentication.

-- 
Shaun Reich,
KDE Developer (www.kde.org)