Re: smtpmail-auth-credentials from authinfo

[Ted Zlatanov <teodor.zlatanov@divine.com>]

On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, jas@extundo.com wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Ted Zlatanov wrote:
> 
>> I had to write this for my own authentication (so I could share my
>> .gnus.el).  I didn't want my smtpmail-auth-credentials to be in the
>> clear, and it seemed like a better idea to do it through authinfo.
> 
> You can set `smtpmail-auth-credentials' from some other place than
> .gnus.el, and protect that file in the same way you protect
> .authinfo.

Right, but that increases the number of places I have a cleartext
password.  I like the idea of the .authinfo file, and it's already
supported by most aspects of Gnus.

>> Has anyone else done something similar?  The solution below
>> requires .authinfo lines formatted "machine xyz port 25 login abc
>> password ijk" which is, perhaps, too inflexible.  Suggestions are
>> welcome.  .authinfo support should probably go into the next
>> smtpmail.el as well, at least as an option.
> 
> Isolating authinfo into a separate package and making it available
> for all emacs applications, and then making Gnus and smtpmail use
> the new interface, seems like a good idea.  Do you want to do it or
> should I?

It looks like gnus-parse-netrc already does all the work, actually (I
looked for authinfo parsing, and missed the netrc parsing
functionality).  It's much better than what I wrote, it handles all
the quoting and optional tokens.

Should I extract that to authinfo.el (or netrc.el?)  so it can be
integrated with smtpmail.el?  Also smtpmail.el needs to be patched so
it accepts the old-style flat lists and the gnus-parse-netrc style
output.

Thanks
Ted