Application resource storage (was: Outgoing mail defaults)

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Even though this means duplicating data, somewhat, I think we should
> keep normal application defaults separate from secret credentials.

Which reminds me of something we discussed half a year ago: Storing
responses to questions.

Today, if Emacs prompts the user for something, and it's something that
should be remembered always by Emacs, Emacs uses custom to save the
value.  This works well for things that map nicely to one single
variable.

But if the question is of the kind "do you want to use port 587 when
connecting to smtp.gmail.com?", then that doesn't really map
straightforwardly to a simple variable.  It might map to an alist of
some kind, but the user may set that alist somewhere else, which makes
all this kind of tricky.

Wouldn't it be nice if Emacs had a way to store these values in a
simpler manner without encroaching on the variable space?

That is, I'm kinda thinking of something like

(store-value "smtpmail-smtp-server-smtp.gmail.com-port" 587)

The first is a token uniquely identifying the resource, and the second
is the value.

These could be stored in ~/.emacs.d/resources, which could then be
queried by the applications.

Does this exist already?  Stupid idea?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen