Password fields often used to use asterisk * characters. This became less appropriate over time, for two reasons. First, more complex password requirements meant that people sometimes use real asterisks in their passwords, so displaying the first character typed as an asterisk could be confusing or alarming. And second, more and more user interfaces used fonts that were designed for (or at least variations of fonts designed for) other media, where asterisks were expected to be small footnote markers rather than large multiplication/programming symbols. Asterisks became too hard to see.
Here we have the second problem recurring. The Ubuntu font has a bullet character that is designed for bulleted lists, which makes it uncomfortably small for telling whether you have typed the expected number of characters in your password. This is a non-trivial problem for something like a SIM PIN or a PUK code, where if you enter the wrong code too many times your phone becomes semi-useless. I think the ideal solution would be to patch the relevant toolkits/themes so that password fields use U+26AB "medium black circle" ⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫ rather than the bullet ••••••••. If that is not practical, a second choice would be to change the Ubuntu font to use the em bullet Vincent mentions rather than the en bullet. ** Summary changed: - Default password field character ••• is small + [1 mod] Default password field character ••• is small ** Changed in: ubuntu-font-family Status: Triaged => Confirmed -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to ubuntu-themes in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/615375 Title: [1 mod] Default password field character ••• is small Status in Ubuntu Font Family: Confirmed Status in “ubuntu-themes” package in Ubuntu: Triaged Bug description: A. At a graphical Ubuntu terminal, enter "gksudo whatever" or "pkexec gedit" (without quotes). Or if you aren't on Ubuntu: B. In a Web browser's address field, enter data:text/html,<input type=password style="font-family:Ubuntu" value="12345"> The bullet chars displayed when you're typing a password on every dialog which asks you for a password (i.e. GDM or gksudo) is too small, definitely smaller than the DejaVu one. IMHO this is an usability issue, because it's hard to see how many characters I typed. As I said before, this isn't a problem when using DejaVu or Bitstream Vera fonts. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-family/+bug/615375/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp