Re: hashcash

["Ted Zlatanov" <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Mon, 04 Oct 2004, jas@extundo.com wrote:

> "Ted Zlatanov" <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
> 
>> After using hashcash on systems with and without the hashcash binary,
>> I think the sending error (when hashcash is missing) should be changed
>> to a warning and sit-for 1.
> 
> But why did you enable hashcash generation, if you don't have the
> binary?  If you are using the same .emacs on several systems, some
> with a hashcash binary, and some without, it seems the proper .emacs
> setting would be:
> 
> (setq message-generate-hashcash (executable-find "hashcash"))

How about:

(defcustom message-generate-hashcash (executable-find "hashcash")
  "*Whether to generate X-Hashcash: headers.
You must have the \"hashcash\" binary installed, see `hashcash-path'."
  :group 'message-headers
  :link '(custom-manual "(message)Mail Headers")
  :type 'boolean)

(it's nil by default now)

But then what if users don't want to generate it?  I'm not sure what's
the right way to proceed.  Maybe there should be these extra
possibilities: (shorter names will probably be needed)

- enable-when-hashcash-binary-in-path
- enable-when-hashcash-binary-in-path-and-fast-machine [but how do we
  know this?]
- ask-to-enable-when-hashcash-binary-in-path [default?]

It seems like we should encourage hashcash generation in order to make
Gnus mail less likely to be tagged as spam - I see this as a service
to the users.  On the other hand it will slow down an already slow
process (sending mail, which often does extra network I/O anyway).

>> The user can't override the error otherwise to send mail, and has to
>> manually set hashcash-path to nil.
> 
> I'm not sure I agree with this view.  It seems the user already
> overrode the default behavior when she request hashcash in the first
> place.  So she could revert to the default behavior by disabling it:
> 
> M-x set-variable RET message-generate-hashcash RET nil RET

My particular problem was that I was doing it the old way with a hook
so I had to remove-hook :) I think you are right, generally speaking,
I was just blinded by my experience.

Ted