FYI: Yadis and LID were explicitly designed to be usable by software that doesn't have a GUI, and OpenID can be used that way as well.
Another thing that might be said here is that there's nothing in the SAML web browser profiles that requires a UI either. Though the fact that identity-provider discovery is not covered in those profiles (except for the Common Domain Cookie approach which is not broadly applicable) does mean that in some deployments (not all by any means) a UI is used to do discovery. The YADIS discovery method could well be used to initiate a SAML web browser profile flow too (and I think some people might even be working on how to do this).
But the SAML browser profiles do require browser features that tend not to be found in other HTTP user agents, or to put it in more of standards way, are not required to be in them for compliance with the HTTP-based spec they are implementing. It is my impression that these specs (eg WebDAV) aren't actually very specific about which HTTP user agent features are mandatory (though I could be wrong about that), which if true may need fixing.
- RL "Bob" _______________________________________________ dix mailing list [email protected] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dix
