RE: [Freetype] Special one-char font?

[Pedriana, Paul]

   >>You may also want to consider the possibility of
   >>users trying to do a cut and paste from your password 
   >>entry field.  This should, of course, result in them 
   >>getting a string of '*' characters rather than the 
   >>password, since the whole point of displaying asterisks 
   >>is to obscure the password.

It is a lot simpler to just disable copying to the clipboard
with the text. Nobody could possibly want to copy a password
string and paste it somewhere else as *****. Web browsers, 
for example, simply disable the clipboard rather than try to 
put something like ***** on it.

   >>It would probably be best to have your text edit control 
   >>keep two strings -- one being the actual password, and the 
   >>other being the displayed string of asterisks.  I believe 
   >>this is the implementation method chosen by current widget 
   >>sets.

I can do that, but it would make a mess of the text edit control
code. Try writing a multi-line multi-locale (UTF16, UTF8, and DBCS)
text editor with text selection, variable width fonts, and horizontal 
and vertical scrolling and then try adding the system that you 
describe into it and you get a lot of work when instead you can 
solve the whole problem by simply using a different font. 

Paul




-----Original Message-----
From: Geoff Baskwill [mailto:address@hidden 
Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 10:40 AM
To: address@hidden
Subject: Re: [Freetype] Special one-char font?

Paul,

You may also want to consider the possibility of users trying to do a cut
and paste from your password entry field.  This should, of course, result in
them getting a string of '*' characters rather than the password, since the
whole point of displaying asterisks is to obscure the password.

It would probably be best to have your text edit control keep two strings
-- one being the actual password, and the other being the displayed string
of asterisks.  I believe this is the implementation method chosen by current
widget sets.

Regards,
glb




> > I want to implement a text edit control for a custom GUI platform 
> > that displays only '*' characters when drawing text. That way, a 
> > password input can be implemented much more easily. Is there a way 
> > to create a TrueType (or similar) font that has only one 
> > characterand /all/ requests for any character always return that 
> > same character? This font must cover all of Unicode, so I can't just 
> > replicate the character in FontLab.
> >
> > The only other alternative I can think of is to have some kind of 
> > shim or new driver that sits between my API and FreeType, but that 
> > wouldn't be convenient when just making a special font would solve 
> > everything.

-- 
Geoff Baskwill <address@hidden>


_______________________________________________
Freetype mailing list
address@hidden http://www.freetype.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype