Deviant OllamJul 21, 2023

has anyone ever thought of simply making an operating system DISABLE caps lock on the lock screen? (or at least just disregard it?)

1. lots of operating systems are capable of *detecting* that caps lock is accidentally on

2. we know this because the O/S will often display a notification message, typically even smaller and even less visible than the minuscule red text in you have to search for in a browser when a form won't submit as you try to click "next")

3. nobody has ever used an all-caps password in their life

4. is this crazy? am i crazy? i feel like this could be an idea. i hereby release all claims of IP and forswear all royalties in perpetuity... just maybe consider implementing this, someone, eh?

Show threadTCMBCJul 21, 2023

@deviantollam I'd bet it is for legacy monospace terminals and being able to emulate them from console. Try google search on "unix" and "monospace" and "terminal" : it is really old.

Ages ago, (probably on SunOS) I seem to remember trying login using all caps, and the result was the telnet session switched to all upper case with prompts, and sessions appeared all upper case. Later, all caps username resulted in all-caps password, but auth would fail, and return back to mixed case login prompt.

Assuming this is true, it seems like:
Q: "why do we need buggy whip support for our cars?
A: "Oh, that is because of Jed. He uses 4 horses to pull his car over rough terrain, so he still needs it.

I *do* see some OS console login support notices, "WARNING CAPS LOCK IS ON" when you try to login on console.

Good luck!

Show threadKruxJul 21, 2023
@TCMBC @deviantollam Cisco routers do the same thing. If you login with all uppercase, then your session is all uppercase. I assumed it is an accessibility thing.
Show threadTCMBC
@krux @deviantollam Here are some more details from 2005 on HP:
(Sorry, this site appears to require javascript to display content)
https://community.hpe.com/t5/operating-system-hp-ux/login-problem-capital-letters/td-p/4925010
Jul 21, 2023 at 7:32pmWeb
Show threadTCMBCJul 21, 2023
@krux @deviantollam Also, if you login from console (tty/ptty not X11/GUI) and you accidentally use upper case for username, and then all failure remain all upper case with USERNAME and PASSWORD, you can sometimes (depends on OS and termcap and login) press "control-d" or sometimes "control-c" to ask that login attached to that tty/ptty to effectively SIGHUP or restart and start over with mixed case "Login" and "Password" supported again.