Re: Making Gnus ask my IMAP username and password after the recent auth-source changes

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:52:39 -0800 Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> wrote: 

LI> Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>> This is now the case.  Any parameters with a nil or t value will be
>> omitted from the saved line.  The password is the only one we will ask
>> for.

LI> It needs to ask for the user name, too, doesn't it?

Maybe.  Right now it's guessed.  People seem to prefer fewer prompts and
you can always `e'dit the line afterwards.  I mentioned that in my reply
to Simon Josefsson just now, too.

LI> With this call:

LI> (nnimap-credentials "foo" '("imap" "imaps"))

LI> I get this prompt, which is still confusing (in addition to not
LI> prompting for the user name):

LI> Password for [any user]@foo:(imap, imaps)? 

LI> It should say

LI> "imap user name at foo: "

LI> and

LI> "imap password for larsi at foo: "

It should have said "Password for [any user]@foo:imap?" and I guess
that's a bug (fix just went in) .  The "any user" and "any port" part is
necessary IMO to make the intent clear.

If the port is numeric your proposal is not so good: 

"143 password at foo: "

so I'd rather keep the current prompt.

LI> In addition, the prompt you get afterwords is still way to complicated.
LI> nnimap has decided what port number to put into the line, so offering to
LI> edit the line at all is just confusing.  If the user wants to edit the
LI> stuff, the user knows that they can just edit the ~/.authinfo file
LI> themselves. 

I disagree.  You can make it an option to bypass that prompt if you
like, but I really want to show it by default.  It's a rare event and
when it happens, the user should know it's going to modify a netrc file.

The user doesn't necessarily know to edit the .authinfo file.  He may
not even know what that is.

Ted