From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general,gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: encrypt.el in No Gnus 0.7 Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 03:47:04 -0500 Message-ID: References: <87zly3y4ru.fsf@catnip.gol.com> <87odejy30k.fsf@catnip.gol.com> <54a15d860710311830s4fa203e3y53fbd6f51496f007@mail.gmail.com> <54a15d860711010824w6888aafdgb0a0e5d48f6fdebb@mail.gmail.com> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1194252503 3898 80.91.229.12 (5 Nov 2007 08:48:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 08:48:23 +0000 (UTC) Cc: ueno@unixuser.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org, ding@gnus.org, miles@gnu.org To: Ted Zlatanov Original-X-From: ding-owner+M14051@lists.math.uh.edu Mon Nov 05 09:48:26 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: ding-account@gmane.org Original-Received: from util0.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.18]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1Ioxd9-0002Lf-1N for ding-account@gmane.org; Mon, 05 Nov 2007 09:48:23 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by util0.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Ioxc4-0003Kx-AK; Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:47:16 -0600 Original-Received: from mx2.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.33]) by util0.math.uh.edu with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Ioxc3-0003Kl-6Q for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:47:15 -0600 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.231.51]) by mx2.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1Ioxbx-00083h-C6 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:47:15 -0600 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([140.186.70.10]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1Ioxbr-0000Zj-00 for ; Mon, 05 Nov 2007 09:47:04 +0100 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1Ioxbs-0003Nt-4z; Mon, 05 Nov 2007 03:47:04 -0500 In-reply-to: (message from Ted Zlatanov on Sun, 04 Nov 2007 19:49:36 -0600) X-Spam-Score: -2.4 (--) List-ID: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:65553 gmane.emacs.devel:82555 Archived-At: RS> I just looked at encrypt.el. It appears to support just GnuPG RS> and "Built-in simple XOR". And built-in simple XOR is just an RS> example, not for real use. The idea is to allow users to supply their own ciphers, and to support other external utilities as users find it necessary. It is a sensible feature, but is it worth including in Emacs? I am not convinced this is sufficiently useful to be worth including. Is there any sign that users use it? 1) users don't have to install GnuPG to use simple obfuscation ciphers (yes, this is sometimes useful). If you mean Rot13, aren't there other interfaces for that? It seems to me that we don't want to use the same command for Rot13 as we use for GPG, because it is inconvenient to have to select one or the other each time. We want two different commands. 3) other external utilities can be supported. Are there any that are useful to support? 4) ciphers, being Emacs Lisp code, can do almost anything: SSH to a remote machine, use BBDB, use IMAP, use version control... I really don't like the idea of labeling such things as "encryption". All in all, encrypt.el still looks like unnecessary complexity which doesn't pull its weight.