At Thiago's request, I'm moving this thread to kde-core-devel, where the discussion shall continue. Summary: Alon Bar-Lev, a prominent implementer of smart card capabilities in open source software, has approached KDE to find out what must be done to enable smart card usage throughout the KDE desktop. Konqueror is the primary target, but shared support for all KDE applications would be ideal (including kdm, for logins). I am behind him, as this is one of the areas I was planning to solve with QCA. Part of the issue in implementing smart cards in KDE (or just Konqueror) is determining which of the layers should be responsible for this sort of thing. There's KIO, KSSL, and QSslSocket. There's also the issue of whether to use QSslSocket or QCA::TLS. George and Thiago insist on using QSslSocket in KDE, although it is not clear if QSslSocket usage will replace KSSL usage yet (as KSSL currently has more features). They seem to be open to code contribution, and so the latest message in the thread (mine, below) discusses where the modifications would need to take place if smart card support were contributed. George states that it is really the KIO API that applications will target. I hope Thiago or George can give a real reply to the message below now. :) -Justin ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: Re: KDE and smartcard support Date: Monday 21 May 2007 9:47 pm From: Thiago Macieira To: Justin Karneges Cc: George Staikos , "Alon Bar-Lev" , "Stephan Kulow" , "Brad Hards" , "Andreas Aardal Hanssen" Justin Karneges wrote: >Okay, so perhaps the first step for smart card capability in Konqueror > is to evaluate the KIO API, and see if it has all of the necessary > hooks, since this is the API that Konqueror targets.  It may also be > the case that no required hooks are needed, if the functionality can be > implemented as UI prompts controlled by KIO, right? > >Next would be to decide where in the stack (KIO and under) that this > handling should be implemented, and write some code to be submitted to > KDE. > >Do you think this is a reasonable approach? > >By the way, are all protocols planned to go through KIO?  For example, > Kopete currently uses QCA for some of its IM protocols.  Will these IM > protocols eventually be wrapped in KIO?  If not, what is the TLS API > recommendation for these applications?  Or can they just use whatever > they want? Please continue the discussion in kde-core-devel. There's no need to keep it private. --   Thiago Macieira  -  thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org     PGP/GPG: 0x6EF45358; fingerprint:     E067 918B B660 DBD1 105C  966C 33F5 F005 6EF4 5358 -------------------------------------------------------