Excerpts from Ciprian Dorin, Craciun's message of Wed Nov 24 20:36:20 +0100 2010: > On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 21:22, Moritz Wilhelmy <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi, > > > > If I see that correctly your dmenu can be either in "display message" or > > "menu" > > mode. > > Um. Not quite. As I've changed it, now it has a "classical-menu" > mode (just how it worked until now) and an > "explanatory-message-accompanied-menu" mode, in which the user also > has the ability to see an explanation (multi-lined) of what the menu > or choice is about.
Okay, it makes a little more sense now. > For example you could use it (And I actually intend to do this) to > implement an `sshpasswd` program that is used by the `ssh` client or > `ssh-agent` to interact with the user (assuming you use `ssh` from a > script and it can't directly interact with the user on tty). Thus if > I'm connecting to a server that doesn't have the key fingerprint > cached, it is going to ask me if it's ok (and the multi-line message > is the standard message written by `ssh`, but passed to the > `sshpasswd` tool), or if I'm using a key which needs confirmation it > should display me which ssh instance (pid, uid, gid, arguments, etc.) > is the one that wants to use the key. (This is not done by `ssh-agent` > but I can obtain this info by using `lsof` and the `ppid` of that > process.) I simply put the followind three lines in my .xinitrc to pass my ssh-passphrase to ssh-agent: keychain --quiet --nogui [ -f ~/.keychain/$HOSTNAME-sh ] && . ~/.keychain/$HOSTNAME-sh ssh-add -l >/dev/null 2>&1 || urxvt -e ssh-add & > Thus I will use `dmenu` from an `sshpasswd` compatible Bash script > just to interact with the user. I hope this clears my reasons, and why > dmenu is still used as a menu, but with a (mandatory needed) > elaborated message given to the user. This sounds rather cumbersome to me. > > I think you should rather split them into two single programs, one for > > displaying messages and the other one for being a menu. > > UNIX teaches us to do one thing well instead of clogging everything into a > > single binary. However, this is just my personal opinion. > > I completely agree with the UNIX KISS philosophy. But as I've > tried to explain above I'm not fusing two completely unrelated > behaviors in the same tool. Well, I still consider dmenu as menu, not as general-purpose-input-bar and especially not as util to enter sensible data like passwords, but go ahead and do whatever you like ;) Best regards, Moritz
