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

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:22:49 -0500

> I think this is fixed in the Gnus trunk as far as the auth-source
> credentials go (Lars will have to fix the nnimap code failure on empty
> credentials).

I'll try again and let you know of remaining problems.

> I have two usability questions (cross-posting to the Gnus mailing list):

> 1) should we have a global override to say "never add netrc entries", or
> should the prompt be Y/N/y/n instead of just y-or-n-p, or should the
> save question be asked only once per file, or something else?

I used to always hit "y" to the question "remember the password", and
now I simply always hit "n" to the question "save the password in
.authinfo.gpg", so it's no worse than in Emacs-23.

If hitting "n" once will remember not to prompt ever again, the only
downside I can see is if someone later decides to change her mind, so we
should have a simple way to say revert the decision in the future.
Maybe the password prompt itself could somehow provide the ability to
say "RET + save", tho it's more important for this feature to be easy to
find than to be quick.

> 2) should auth-source let-bind the password-cache timeout to something
> larger?  The default is pretty short and for auth-source I think at
> least 30 minutes are reasonable.  It could be a customizable integer.

I'm not sure what this entails, but until now, Emacs has been caching my
password for the whole session (typically several days) and
I like that.  I would not want to have to re-enter my password every
half hour.

        Stefan