Re: smtpmail authentication again

[Richard Riley <rileyrg@gmail.com>]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> On Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:34:43 +0100 Richard Riley <rileyrg@gmail.com> wrote: 
>
> RR> Thanks ted. I'll try to use this then to store my erc credentials in gpg
> RR> file. Strikes me as the srt of thing that would greatly benefit from
> RR> little wrappers for the commone usage as simple as
>
> RR> getUserForHost("host");
> RR> getPassForHost("host");
>
> (CamelCase?  Horror!)
>
> That would hide the search API, especially that you can get multiple
> answers and connection parameters for a query.  End users are not

It doesnt hide anything. The serch "api" is still there. Personally I
wouldnt have a snowballs chance in hell of understanding the elisp you
posted above ;)

> supposed to use auth-source directly, and packages will almost always
> want the complex search.

I think thats a bit of a jump. I'm asking as I have a lot of passwords
for various things in a hidden, chmod'ed plain text file. And Im certain
many others do too. In a gpg file they are safe. If I lose my netbook...

>
> Also getPass or whatever it's called will expose the password, whereas
> now it's wrapped in a lexical-let so you can't see it easily until
> you're ready to use it.

If one uses the function one takes the chance. I suspect the great
majority of us dont worryy too mcuh about certain passwords for things
not overly critical being in the memory of our local machines at
home. And anyways, it depends on how we code the the stuff that uses
this getPass/getUser wrapper : lexical hiding can be applied there too.

>
> I understand the benefit of simplicity, though.  Hmmm.  Besides ERC,
> where would you use the simpler functions?

Absolutely everywhere I needed to access a uid & password that I dont want
stored in plain text : "machine" here doubles for "account". Off the top
of my head:

erc, twitter, mysql, mpd server, bitlbee, identica.

Im sure there are plenty more.