Re: encrypt.el

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004, address@hidden wrote:

> You're my main advisor on encryption; if you think that encrypt.el
> does the right things, I would be glad to see it moved out of Gnus.
> Doing this requires writing text for etc/NEWS and for the Lisp
> manual.

I can do that.  I am concerned that I don't have Emacs CVS access,
though, in case I need to make changes to the code I'll be
maintaining.

> However, there is one thing in encrypt.el that seems strange
> and perhaps a bug:
> 
>     (defcustom encrypt-password-cache-expiry 200
>       "Encryption password timeout.
>     When set, directly sets password-cache-expiry"
>       :type 'integer
>       :group 'encrypt
>       :set (lambda (symbol value)
>            (set symbol value)
>            (setq password-cache-expiry value)))
> 
> What job is this supposed to do?  Is this the right way
> to do that job?  Perhaps putting password-cache-expiry
> into this custom broup is the right solution.

I think your way is much better, but I was thinking of the manual on
the :group keyword:

     If you use this keyword more than once, you can put a single item
     into more than one group.  Displaying any of those groups will
     show this item.  Please don't overdo this, since the result would
     be annoying.

Perhaps it would be better to default encrypt-password-cache-expiry to
'default, which would use password-cache-expiry, and also allow a
numeric value which would override password-cache-expiry.  The reason
is that if password.el is used in Emacs, the general password cache
expiry is not necessarily what you want for encryption cache expiry.

Please let me know what you think.

Ted