Hide characters in a string prompt dialog for secure password entry

specify a font that is all bullets, like PasswordDotsFont:

https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1106896/password_dots_2

That is a good idea, but it creates more problems:

1) How can I change the font of the value of the setvariable control separately from the title?

2) How can I distribute a non-standard font to the users of my procedure easily?

You could do it with a notebook subwindow. Use a Hook function to process keystrokes in the notebook, grab the typed character for your own use and insert an asterisk in its place.

Here's a code snippet that creates a notebook subwindow and processes user input with a hook function. It doesn't do what you need but could be adapted.

One other method is to capture every keystroke in the SetVariable procedure, store each of them sequentially in an internal string (wave), and only return * (asterisk) to the panel display for any character input. When the keystroke is a return, then process the function call further using the string (wave).

jjweimer wrote:

One other method is to capture every keystroke in the SetVariable procedure,

Note that there's no eventCode for keyboard events in the WMSetVariableAction structure.

tony wrote:

 

jjweimer wrote:

 

One other method is to capture every keystroke in the SetVariable procedure,

 

 

Note that there's no eventCode for keyboard events in the WMSetVariableAction structure.

I believe that I have done this in the past by capturing the sva.sval parameter during an eventCode 3 (live update) and/or eventCode 8 (begin edit Igor Pro 7 or later) and then forcing the control to change back to something else at the event. It is not an easy process to manage but it is a doable process if I recall.

Feature Request: This could be handled by the equivalent of an fstyle=8: password mode for setvariable controls.

Thanks all for the good comments.

I followed Tony's notebook with hook idea.

Here is the code using a dot from the Wingding font.

BEWARE: this example code prints the resulting password (which is hidden as the notebook userdata) as plain text in the history.

I used a similar approach but used a panel instead of a notebook. I simply hid the SetVariable input by disabling it and putting it off-screen, then temporarily used a global string to pass the password rather than the userdata approach.

This is a very nice bit of code!

I suggest changing this line of Passwordpanel():

into:

So that if the user clicks in the control's edit field it doesn't show the typed characters as Wingdings glpyhs: