GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 395805
Indicate minimum name length on PGP create dialog
Last modified: 2018-08-03 00:42:10 UTC
Alter the logic that decides if the user-entered Full Name is valid or not. If the user entered less characters than the arbitrarily chosen minimum (5), don't force the "Create" button to be disabled. Instead, enable it as soon as one character is typed. If the user presses "Create" with less than the arbitrary minimum characters then display a pop-up modal dialog confirming that the short length is intentional. If it isn't then return to the edit dialog. Other information: My legal name is "TJ" - two characters - and this arbitrary minimum length prevents me from adding a key with my correct full name.
TJ, I sympathize with you but this is not a bug. GnuPG will not allow keys to be generated with a Real Name less than 5 characters. I tried finding a reference in RFC 2440 for a minimum length for names but didn't see one. If you can convince the GPG developers to change their minimum name length, we will be happy to do so as well.
I didn't post this as a bug - it was under the classification: Usability This is a suggestion for how the application could be made easier to use. Thanks for the explanation as to why seahorse behaved the way it did. Maybe to enhance usability a short note could be added to the dialog? It took me a while to work out *why* the "Create" button was disabled, and I'm not exactly the dumbest user around :)
I think our old key generation dialogs indicated the minimum length. Would you say that changing the dialog to read "Full Name (minimum 5 characters):" is a sufficient improvement in usability?
No, that looks too wordy. We need a good solution for these sorts of inline messages all throughout seahorse. A popup dialog seems overly frustrating, and making all the messages longer will just lead to clutter. I've been thinking along the lines of a tooltip looking box built into the dialog near the action button that shows up when things go wrong...
Created attachment 109449 [details] [review] Adds tooltip This patch adds a tooltip to the "Create" button with the text "The Full Name must be at least 5 characters long." if the name isn't and sets it to null if it is. Let me know if it's sufficient and I'll commit it.
Stef?
I've just faced this problem and I should say that's very confusing behavior: after filling all the fields the "Create" button remains disabled... The help documentation also does not give the minimum length of "Full name" field. So, currently the user is left in complete mystery why the program does not let him create the key. I believe, a tooltip is not visible enough. To my mind, there are 2 things to be done: 1) The "Create" button should become enabled after the 1st character is entered, but when pressed, an error message should be displayed if the name is too short. 2) The documentation should be updated to clearly state the minimal name length requirement. This will make the program behavior obvious to the user.
Hello ! It's 2017 and there is still nothing about the length of the Name field when creating PGP Key ! Seahorse 3.20.0, Debian Stretch Steps to reproduce : Open seahorse File -> New -> PGP Key The "Create" button stays greyed out until at least 5 chars are entered, and nothing tells us what's going on :) Even in the help (when accessed from the Help menu), in "Create PGP Keys", there is nothing about that. Maybe there could be something between brackets in the Create PGP key dialog box? And in the Help :p Also, the solution proposed by Adam 8 years ago seems fine. Thank you!
Fixed as of commit 0b857fa0 on master. To give the user enough visual hints, we show a secondary-icon in the name entry with an explanatory tooltip as long as the name is not long enough.