From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/43923 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stainless Steel Rat Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: pop3.el broken Date: 18 Mar 2002 13:04:24 -0500 Organization: The Happy Fun Ball Brigade Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: <02Mar18.130027est.119225@gateway.intersystems.com> References: <02Mar18.104948est.119198@gateway.intersystems.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1016474858 21829 127.0.0.1 (18 Mar 2002 18:07:38 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 18:07:38 +0000 (UTC) Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 16n1Xl-0005fz-00 for ; Mon, 18 Mar 2002 19:07:37 +0100 Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu ([129.7.128.10] ident=lists) by malifon.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 16n1Vh-0007rp-00; Mon, 18 Mar 2002 12:05:29 -0600 Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Mon, 18 Mar 2002 12:05:35 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com (qmailr@sclp3.sclp.com [209.196.61.66]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id MAA07578 for ; Mon, 18 Mar 2002 12:05:22 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: (qmail 14617 invoked by alias); 18 Mar 2002 18:05:10 -0000 Original-Received: (qmail 14612 invoked from network); 18 Mar 2002 18:05:09 -0000 Original-Received: from gateway.intersys.com (HELO intersystems.com) (198.133.74.253) by gnus.org with SMTP; 18 Mar 2002 18:05:09 -0000 Original-Received: by gateway.intersystems.com id <119225>; Mon, 18 Mar 2002 13:00:27 -0500 Original-To: "(ding)" X-Attribution: Rat In-Reply-To: Original-Lines: 57 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Cuyahoga Valley) Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:43923 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:43923 * Simon Josefsson on Mon, 18 Mar 2002 | Huh? A password is a text string, entered on the keyboard. As such, it | must be encoded in some character set in order to be input to a hash | function. No, it isn't. A pass phrase could be an 8-bit string, not necessarilly humanly readable text, and not necessarilly entered on a keyboard. That is an extreme situation, but if 8-bit pass phrases are to be accepted then this extreme must be taken into consideration. Such a string must never be encoded as anything. Or, to MULEtilate it, the coding system is binary since no-conversion doesn't mean no-conversion some of the time. | pop3 has implicitely encoded it as ASCII traditionally, assuming that | (md5 "foobar") encodes the characters "foobar" as ASCII characters before | applying md5 on it. pop3.el has never made any such assumption. MULE may make it seem to appear that it does, but I have long maintained that MULE is broken in this regard. Emacs Lisp should work identically in any Emacs without having to work around the environment's brain-damaged assumptions. [...] | If you send a patch to the Emacs maintainers that modifies it to what | you want [as long as it works] I would hope that they will unfork it. I did, and the FSF did not. By the way, you cannot use the FSF's version with a VAX/VMS POP server. I fixed that bug in 1998, but the FSF has ignored the fix after repeated submissions. I gave up in disgust. [...] | Right, I wish that XEmacs pop3.el could be reverted to your version | (and that you would handle the bug reports ;)), and that people | wanting enhanced behaviour could use epop3 or another package | containing the current XEmacs pop3.el. It is confusing to fork code | and not change the name. Too little, too late. I asked them repeatedly to change the name. They refused, or simply ignored the request. I gave up in disgust. [...] | Defadvice isn't a good long term solution. Yes, well, given that the real problem, MULE, will never be fixed, advice is the only solution that has a reasonable chance of working everywhere. There are three hopelessly forked versions of pop3.el out there. Creating a fourth is not going to help. -- Rat \ Happy Fun Ball contains a liquid core, Minion of Nathan - Nathan says Hi! \ which, if exposed due to rupture, should PGP Key: at a key server near you! \ not be touched, inhaled, or looked at. That and five bucks will get you a small coffee at Starbucks.