Re: Section 3.2 of secsh-auth-kbdinteract-01

[Nicolas Williams <Nicolas.Williams%ubsw.com@localhost>]

On Fri, Jan 18, 2002 at 10:14:42AM -0800, Frank Cusack wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 18, 2002 at 08:01:35AM -0500, RJ Atkinson wrote:
> > 
> > On Thursday, January 17, 2002, at 08:18  PM, Frank Cusack wrote:
> > > 30 does seem an odd number[1].  I don't recall the exact device (probably
> > > Palm) but I do believe it was in fact based on some minimal screen width
> > > limitation.  The reason the name and prompt fields were limited is b/c
> > > they are expected to be printed on a single line.
> > 
> > IMHO, either the advice "SHOULD be limited to 30 characters" ought to be
> > deleted xor that should be edited to a much more reasonable value than 30.
> > Given that most systems, even a Palm, can wrap lines, it isn't clear to me
> > that any limit is needed.  And "user@domain" strings can be VERY long.
> 
> The 'name' field is intended to be the window title on GUI clients.
> The window title has a limited number of characters that can usefully
> be displayed.  If the name is important (eg, tells the user what device
> to use out of several he has) and is 256 characters but the client
> is forced to truncate (or the window toolkit just truncates) that
> important info is lost.

Why should the "name" be the dialog title? Why can't the dialog title be
"SSH Prompt" and let the prompt name be given in full in the dialog
window.

Bear in mind, I have filed a bug report with Sun about CDE's
dtlogin/dtgreet not displaying multi-line PAM prompts correctly, and I
would consider the same behaviour a bug in any other GUI.

> A similar argument exists for the prompt fields.

A similar argument exists for the prompt fields.

> So I do not agree with you that no limit is needed, however at the same
> time it is clear that strings can be very long.

There should be no limit. If kbd-interactive seeks to be a carrier of
PAM prompts and responses and PAM places no limit on those, then neither
should kbd-interactive.

> /fc


Cheers,

Nico
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