Re: bug#8050: Gnus does not connect to my IMAP server any more

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:29:36 -0800 Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <lmi@gnus.org> wrote: 

LMI> Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>> You may want to edit the line in case you want to change it before it's
>> written.  Lars also thought this was not good but I feel strongly this
>> is useful functionality and it's not too intrusive.

LMI> I think it's definitely too intrusive.

LMI> The question that's relevant is "do you want to save the password?"
LMI> That's the only thing a normal user could possibly be interested in, and
LMI> it's a yes or no question.

I disagree.  It's a single extra letter in a y/n prompt.  I don't see
how it's intrusive.  You can set auth-source-never-save to t right now
and never even see the y/n prompt.  I've accomodated all the prompting
suggestions but I'm not removing that functionality.

LMI> Asking the user to "e"-dit the netrc line would be for Gnus to prompt
LMI> the user on `C-c C-c' "do you want to (s)end the message or (e)dit the
LMI> MIME representation of the message before sending?"  The latter is only
LMI> interesting for people who are implementing the MIME encoding, and not
LMI> any user.  The same goes for the .netrc stuff.

No, because the netrc file is not raw data but structured information.
(Although that kind of editing the raw MIME sounds very useful for
debugging and testing MIME support.)

It's like adding a command to edit the score file or having two ways to
edit the topic parameters (`G c' and `G p').  Emacs thrives on power
users; let's not oversimplify the interface.

LMI> If you want to add a debugging mode to auth-source that allows you to
LMI> edit the .netrc lines, that's fine, but it's not fine to confuse users
LMI> on something as basic as password management.

It's not confusing.  But maybe `e' should be "add the auth info and then
edit the netrc file, allowing `C-c C-c' to save it" which would be more
in line with what `G p' and score file editing do.  And then we can add
that command to Gnus and Emacs in general so you can edit your
auth-sources authinfo/netrc files quickly (in the global scope you would
have to choose the file with some extra UI).  Yeah, that sounds like
useful functionality.

Ted