M-x epa-...

M-x epa-...

[Richard Stallman]

The command names M-x epa-... are not natural for people to remember.
`epa' is, effectively, a magic code.

Surely we can do better.  For instance, we could make an alias for
each command with `crypt' instead of `epa'.

You might have a better idea for precisely how to do this, but let's
do it somehow.  The existing names are totally unhelpful.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.

Re: M-x epa-...

[Bozhidar Batsov]

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Indeed. epa-... is an absolutely terrible name. I remember the first time I
used some of the commands there I had to look up the meaning of EPA in the
source code...


On 29 June 2013 23:30, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> The command names M-x epa-... are not natural for people to remember.
> `epa' is, effectively, a magic code.
>
> Surely we can do better.  For instance, we could make an alias for
> each command with `crypt' instead of `epa'.
>
> You might have a better idea for precisely how to do this, but let's
> do it somehow.  The existing names are totally unhelpful.
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> President, Free Software Foundation
> 51 Franklin St
> Boston MA 02110
> USA
> www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
> Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
>   Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.
>
>
>

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Re: M-x epa-...

[Daiki Ueno]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> The command names M-x epa-... are not natural for people to remember.
> `epa' is, effectively, a magic code.
>
> Surely we can do better.  For instance, we could make an alias for
> each command with `crypt' instead of `epa'.
>
> You might have a better idea for precisely how to do this, but let's
> do it somehow.  The existing names are totally unhelpful.

How about prefixing 'gnupg' (same length as 'crypt') or simply calling
them without the prefix, like 'M-x sign-region'?

Regards,
-- 
Daiki Ueno

Re: M-x epa-...

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Mon, 01 Jul 2013 21:20:25 +0900 Daiki Ueno <ueno@gnu.org> wrote: 

DU> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>> The command names M-x epa-... are not natural for people to remember.
>> `epa' is, effectively, a magic code.
>> 
>> Surely we can do better.  For instance, we could make an alias for
>> each command with `crypt' instead of `epa'.
>> 
>> You might have a better idea for precisely how to do this, but let's
>> do it somehow.  The existing names are totally unhelpful.

DU> How about prefixing 'gnupg' (same length as 'crypt')

Do we want to make the dependency on GPG so explicit?

DU> or simply calling them without the prefix, like 'M-x sign-region'?

I'd love those aliases for top-level interactive commands: sign a
region, encrypt/decrypt a region, verify a signature...

Ted

Re: M-x epa-...

[Richard Stallman]

        [ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider
        [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,
        [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example.

    DU> How about prefixing 'gnupg' (same length as 'crypt')

    Do we want to make the dependency on GPG so explicit?

It is unlikely we will ever replace GnuPG with some other program;
probably "encrypting mail" in GNU will always mean using GnuPG.  But
even if that is so, `crypt' is a better name for this purpose because
it is closer to the way users think about what they want to do.

A user's first thought about this is not "I want to do GnuPG on this
message" but rather "I want to encrypt this message."

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.