Re: Exo-graphical systems (Was: [elysium-developers] PCT])

[Adam L. <ag...@li...>]

On Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 06:56:38PM +0100, Claus Matthiesen wrote:
> Keyboard handling has not been discussed that elaborately, but it seems we
> can safely distribute keyboard commands to all processes that request it.
> They know if they're focused, so if they have no need for keyboard input
> when they are not displayed, they can safely ignore it.

You have some great ideas on graphical handling, but I must contest this po=
int.
I assume elysium is going to be a proper O/S, with multiple users as in *NI=
X.
I don't want the kernel to have to know anything about users, and enforce
permissions, I see some logon process taking a username&passwd and then
spawning a shell with the correct capabilities for that 'user'.

Now if we have many processes, with differing permissions we *cannot* allow
the keyboard data to be sent to all of them. For example, if someone is tel=
neted
onto the same box as me, they could run a program that saves all keystokes
(because we "distribute keyboard commands to all processes that request it")
and he could capture my GPG passphrase etc, as I type it. This is not a
solution.

The problem is that the kernel doesn't know anything about 'focus'. Also ma=
ny
processes can have 'focus', because there can be many keyboards. Only one
wired to the box, but many over a network.

We could have a keyboard server that sends the data on to the correct proce=
ss,
but if there are keyboards over a network, this means that it must handle
network data too. This means lots of abstractions.

I can't really think of a good solution at the moment. Anyone?

AGL

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