Re: libnettle/libhogweed WIP

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>
> Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 13:24:50 -0400
> 
> On Wed, 19 Apr 2017 18:45:40 +0300 Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote: 
> 
> EZ> The NEWS entry should mention the section in the manual which
> EZ> describes these features.
> 
> I think I did it right?

Not sure what you mean.  I just did "git pull", and your branch's NEWS
doesn't mention the manual section where this is described.  Something
like "See the node 'FOO' in the ELisp manual for more details."  Am I
blind?

> EZ> I would suggest to extract the common description of the
> EZ> (BUFFER-OR-STRING START END CODING-SYSTEM NOERROR) form, so you could
> EZ> have it only once, instead of repeating it with each function.
> 
> I'm not sure how to make that look good in the texi docs. Is there an
> existing convention for defining a data format that will be reused in
> function definitions?

Something like this at the beginning of the node:

  All of the functions described here accept argument lists of the
  form @code{(BUFFER-OR-STRING START END CODING-SYSTEM NOERROR)},
  where BUFFER-OR-STRING ...

> EZ> I think (file "FOO") is the best.  (I understand that the file will be
> EZ> submitted to GnuTLS functions for processing, is that right?)
> 
> Since you and David agreed, I've made that the third allowed format. It
> errors out for now. Should I use an internal buffer (not in the visible
> list) and read into it, and then use the buffer data? Or should I use
> emacs_open() etc. and actually implement a raw file read operation,
> which should be a bit more secure and less subject to coding systems?

I'm confused.  I thought this form of an argument will cause the file
name be passed to GnuTLS functions, and GnuTLS will then open the file
and read its data.  If that's not true, and Emacs needs to read the
file anyway, then what's the purpose of having this form of the
argument?  How is it better than just reading the file into a
temporary buffer and submitting the buffer to the function?  I thought
you wanted to avoid having the file's contents in Emacs's memory for
security reasons.