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

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Sat, 05 Mar 2011 15:13:53 -0500 Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> 
wrote: 

SM> - But when I'm asked for a user name there is no default, whereas earlier
SM>   my local user name was used as default (which happens to work for me on
SM>   most of the machines to which I can connect).  Please use the local user
SM>   name as default in that prompt.

I'll add that.  I thought I did but must have forgotten.

SM> - Also when I'm then asked for a password, the prompt says "Password for
SM>   user foo, host bar" which is more verbose but not more clear than
SM>   "Password for foo@bar" used in earlier Gnus.

That's the default prompt.  Every package can supply their own which
makes sense in context.  So nnimap.el could supply the password prompt
"IMAP password for user %u, host %h:%p" for instance.  Does that seem OK
to you?  If so I can add it to nnimap.el.

SM> - I'm asked whether to save the password regardless of whether the
SM>   password and user names are correct or not.  That's really bad.

auth-source.el doesn't know at that time whether the authentication will
be successful.  I think you're saying we need an `auth-source-save'
function to be called after the fact instead of a ":create t" parameter.

But what about the case where the server is down and yet you know the
password is good?  Do we throw it away?

SM> - When I was asked whether to save my password, the cursor was not shown in
SM>   the prompt, which looked weird.  Maybe it was a temporary redisplay
SM>   problem (I hit `n' mechanically pretty quickly, so maybe Emacs didn't
SM>   have time to display the cursor).

I'm not sure about that one, I'm just using `read-passwd'.
  
SM> - If the connection fails (e.g. bad password or bad user name), I don't
SM>   get asked again, instead Gnus continues in offline mode.

nnimap.el could use `auth-source-forget+' and then retry that query.
But as above, I think you're saying we need to save/cache AFTER
authentication success.

SM> - After refusing to save the password in authinfo.gpg, I get a message
SM>   along the lines of "auth-source-search: CREATED 1 results ...".
SM>   I don't care whether "results" is replaced by "result" when there's
SM>   only 1, but this looks like a debug message which should disappear.

I think it makes sense to show confirmation that we just added to your
passwords.  It's a rare event and deserves notice.

Hiding it by default is quite easy, if you feel strongly about it.  I don't.

Thanks for the help, as always.

Ted