TkPasMan --

A simple but (at least I think...) useful personal password manager.

You can store usernames and passwords with understandable descriptions,
and put them in the X selection in many ways, so you can easily paste
what you need in your applications.


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How To Use TkPasMan:

A. Entering a new site.

  1. Choose `Add site' from the Edit menu to add a new site you want to
     store your password for.

  2. Type a clear description, and press <Enter>.

  3. Now you can type your username and/or password in the fields on the
     right.

  4. Use the checkbuttons to adjust the way username and/or password will
     be copied into the primary X selection when you select a
     description.  Most times, you will want to select the first two
     options, i.e. `Username' and `Password'.



B. Selecting username and password and pasting them elsewhere.

  1. Point your mouse to one of the descriptions in the list on the left.
  
  2. Just press your left mouse button, and, depending on your
     configuration of the checkbuttons, TkPasMan will select a username
     or password for you.

  3. Now, point your mouse to the application you want to paste your
     username in.

  4. Just press the middle mouse, and voilą, the item will be pasted!
     TkPasMan will automagically put the next item (most times a password)
     in the X selection, so, after you pasted a username somewhere, just
     go to the place you want to paste the password, and again
     middle-click to put the password on its place.



C. Special possibilities.

  1. You can tell TkPasMan to paste the usernames or passwords for a site
     with newlines appended (using the `Append Newlines' checkbox).  This
     is useful for terminal sessions, like telnet.

  2. You can tell TkPasMan to paste the password twice.  This comes in
     handy when you for example have to confirm a password.



D. Encryption.

  TkPasMan can use OpenSSL (if installed) to encrypt its password file.
  You will then have to enter a master password every time you run
  TkPasMan.  The file on your hard drive will then be very difficult to
  read for other people.
  
  Note, however, that when you aren't being careful with your login,
  other people still might be able to delete your file!  Whether or not
  you are using encryption, the password file is only readable by you.

  1. To use encryption, check `Options->Encryption->Use Encryption'.  Now
     you will be prompted to enter a password.  You have to enter it twice,
     to prevent typing mistakes.
  
  2. After entering the password twice (and don't forget it!!) you will be
     prompted to save your file.  If you don't, the encryption will be
     cancelled.

  3. When encryption has been enabled, you can just continue to use
     TkPasMan as before.  But when you want to switch off encryption, or
     change the master password, you will have to enter the master
     password again.

  Normally, the site descriptions and associated usernames and passwords
  are saved in a file .tkpasman in your home directory.  When you use
  encryption, the encryption algorithm name (by default blowfish (`bf'))
  is appended to the filename, like this: .tkpasman.bf



E. The Options Menu.

  The Options Menu has lots of nice config options:
  
  Read only:  When checked, changing the contents of the password file is
     no longer allowed.  This is mainly to prevent accidental changes.

  Confirm Save on Quit:  When checked, TkPasMan will ask you, when you
     quit, is you want to save your password file.  When unchecked,
     TkPasMan will save your data without asking.

  Confirm Remove site:  When checked, TkPasMan will ask you a
     confirmation when you delete a site from the list.

  Encryption:  Use this submenu to enable or disable encryption, or to
     change the master password used to encrypt your file with.

  Show Passwords:  When checked, passwords are readable in the entries on
     the right.  This is only useful if you must paste a password that's
     normally not pasted, but don't want to change your file.  When the
     passwords are readable, you can select the text in the entry with
     your mouse and the paste it, bypassing TkPasMan's own selection
     system.

  Show Menubar:  When checked, a menubar is visible on top of the
     TkPasMan window. Unless you are longing for the good old
     TkPasMan-1.0 days, I won't recommend unchecking it.

  Show Statusbar:  When checked, a status bar is visible on the bottom of
     the main TkPasMan window.  This statusbar provides very precise
     status feedback, about what exactly is currently in the X selection,
     so I won't recommend unchecking it.

  Remember Window size:  When checked, TkPasMan will remember it's main
     window size when you save your config options.  (Not it's absolute
     location, however.)

  Skin:  A very important option.  Actually quite a bit, so you can make
     your TkPasMan window, lurking somewhere around your desktop very,
     very recoqnizable.  The Pale-pink skin is particularly recommended
     ;-) Never leave TkPasMan running at your desk when you leave!

  Save Options on Quit:  Subject says all.
  
  Save Options Now:  When you want the current settings to be default,
     first uncheck the previous entry, then choose this entry.



F. Miscellaneous Notes.

  *  Any adjustments you make in the fields on the right, are immediately
     stored! There is no `undo' option.  So be careful in typing
     passwords.

  *  All changes will be saved when you quit the program, using a backup
     file.  When you do not want to store your changes, please make sure
     you highlight the `Confirm Save on Quit' from the Options menu, exit
     the program and choose not to save.

  *  When you do not regularly add sites, you can lock the file using the
     `Read only' option in the Options menu.  That prevents you from
     accidentally changing your file.  Also you can use chmod to write
     protect the file really (chmod 0400 ~/.tkpasman).

  *  During execution of the program, a lockfile is present to prevent
     several instances of TkPasMan from changing the password file. When
     the tkpasman executable accidentally gets killed, you might need to
     remove the lockfile (by default ~/.tkpasman.lock) manually.



G. Commandline Options.

  --help:  Displays this help screen, then exits.  See the README file,
     the built-in help or use the --fullhelp option for more information.

  --fullhelp:  Dumps the full built-in help to the console and exits.

  --version:  Displays version number, then exits.

  --readonly:  Opens the password file readonly, so you can't make any
     changes.

  --dump:  Directly dumps the content of the password file to the console
     and exits.

  --disable-selection:  Disables the selection mechanism.  Useful when
     you only want to maintain a password file and not accidentally use
     it.



H. Some Quirks.

  *  The dynamic selection mechanism does not work well when other
     applications (like KDE's klipper or Downloader for X) periodically
     scan the selection.  So then you should paste things by selecting
     them from the `Username' or `Password' entry, or temporary disable
     the selection scanning in the other applications.  From version 2.1
     on, TkPasMan can warn you if it thinks an application is requesting
     the selection (by determining how fast the request arrives).

  *  A totally superfluous skin-change function is present in the Options
     menu, to make TkPasMan suit your desperate desktop theming needs.  In
     the future  the simple self-contained cooltk library might grow out
     to a cool tcl/tk application framework.


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When you have any feature suggestions or comments, feel free to mail me at
wbsoft@xs4all.nl.

                       Enjoy!
                       Wilbert Berendsen, April 4, 2001



This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA .
