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

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 17:46:56 -0500

>> 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 :)

> I think this is like a debugging thing.  Emacs shouldn't be a platform
> to debug the applications running in it.  It should just run the
> applications.  :-)

Indeed.  It's a great feature of Emacs that it is good at development an
debugging of its own code, but that shouldn't be imposed on the user.

The latest update brought in even worse behavior, BTW.  Now I get the
following prompts, in a kind of "battle for the worst prompt":
- first prompt asks me to choose the host, something like
  "host for [USER]@(diro imap.iro.umontreal.ca):(143 997 imap imap): "
  WTF?  For reference the relevant part of my gnus-secondary-select-methods
  says:
        (nnimap "diro"
                (nnimap-address "imap.iro.umontreal.ca")
                (nnimap-stream tls))

  This is a brand new prompt, which earlier Gnus could answer on its own.
- then comes the prompt for the user (which looks ugly, but at least
  makes some amount of sense, tho I guess I should change my .gnus to
  provide this info directly in gnus-secondary-select-methods).
- third prompt asks for the port to use (143 997 imap imaps).
  Again, that's a new prompt which earlier Gnus could answer on its own.
  It's slightly less hideous than the first prompt, and comes with
  the same comical completion feature (I love completion, as you may
  guess, but when it's for something which the user should not have to
  indicate at all, and for some users it's even something they don't
  know...).
- finally the real prompt for the password comes up (still looking
  pretty ugly).  Will I ever get back a simple "Password for
  monnier@diro: "?
- then comes one more prompt to ask me if I want to save the password,
  and this prompt is as long and ugly as last time, tho it at least
  keeps the password hidden (but taking up space nonetheless).
  The prompt I'd like here is just what we had ealier:
  "Save password in .authinfo.gpg?".

All those prompts are *long* which is *bad*.
I know that nowadays Emacs can usually resize the minibuffer on the fly,
but that's no reason to use long prompts which do nothing more than slow
the user down trying to figure out what the hell he's supposed to do.

        Stefan