Subject: Re: bug#22711: 25.0.91; prompt for gpg password is displayed in a dialog box rather than in the minibuffer

From: Daiki Ueno <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 17:01:24 +0900

Thanks for the feedback.

[email-masked] (N. Jackson) writes:

> Perhaps this information could be included in the NEWS entry for
> pinentry.el? (And an entry in the manual might be nice too, although I'm
> not sure where it would live.)

Sure, will do.

> The password prompt, however, fails to identify the file for which the
> password is being requested. In Emacs 24 and 25.0.90, the prompt was,
> for example,
>
>     Passphrase for symmetric encryption for /home/nlj/.authinfo.gpg:
>
> Now there is a small buffer displaying
>
>     Enter passphrase
>
> followed by a few blank lines, and, then in the minibuffer, the prompt
>
>     Passphrase:
>
> Could the prompt in the minibuffer (or the text in the little buffer)
> not show the name of the file?

That could be a bit tricky since Pinentry is not called with such
information, but perhaps it might be possible by sending context
information through the special envvar PINENTRY_USER_DATA.  I have just
proposed a patch to Pinentry for that.

> In fact, what purpose does the little buffer serve? It seems to
> clutter up the interface and not add anything useful. Or am I missing
> something there?

If public key encryption were used, the buffer would contain something like:

    Please enter the passphrase to unlock the OpenPGP secret key:
    "Daiki Ueno <[email-masked]>"
    4096-bit RSA key, ID C8C530D6,
    created 2010-02-04 (main key ID D7E69871).

For the case like the above, we could hide the buffer (though this is
also a bit tricky since the strings may be translated in user's native
language).

Regards,
-- 
Daiki Ueno