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

From: Ted Zlatanov <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2011 14:16:03 -0600

On Thu, 17 Feb 2011 21:37:35 -0500 Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]> wrote: 

SM> - for the user name, the prompt says something like "[USER?]diro:143",
SM>   which is very cryptic.  While I know why there's a "143" there,
SM>   there's no reason to expect users to know that (my .gnus doesn't
SM>   mention any port number).  Worse: I really have no clue what the "USER?"
SM>   is about.
SM> - for the password, the prompt again mentioned 143, which I also thing
SM>   is not warranted.
SM> - then I get prompted to save the password, which is the worst of the
SM>   three:
SM>   - the prompt is *very* long (more than 80 chars).
SM>   - it includes the password in cleartext (WTF?).

Yeah, I see now it was a mistake the way I did it.

SM>   - none of the extra data is really something I care about when
SM>     deciding whether I want to save my password in .authinfo.gpg.
SM>     It's just distracting from the main issue.

I *very much* care what goes into that file and want to see the exact
text.  So find my proposal to accomodate normal and obsessive users
alike below :)

On Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:19:58 -0800 Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]> wrote: 

LI> The prompts should simply be

LI> "User name for diro:imap: "

LI> and 

LI> "Password for diro:imap: "

LI> Or something like that.  Well, really, the host name should be the
LI> (real) fully qualified host name, if possible, but that may not be
LI> feasible.

OK, I'll work on improving those prompts.

>> - then I get prompted to save the password, which is the worst of the
>> three:

LI> Yes, it should just say "Save the password for future sessions? " and
LI> not much more.

How about:

"Save the $HOSTNAME password for future sessions? y/n/s/?"

where `s' shows the line we will add with the password replaced by ****?

Ted