Re: smtpmail and ~/.authinfo

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2011 20:04:42 +0200 Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <address@hidden> 
wrote: 

LMI> Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden> writes:
>> I think authinfo/netrc files should be portable and support Unicode in a
>> way that enables other (older or new!) software to use them too.  IMHO
>> enforcing UTF-8 encoding is the best way to achieve that.

LMI> That's not realistic, I think.
...
LMI> So there isn't any wiggle room here.  The user has to be able to store a
LMI> random sequence of bytes into the .authinfo file to be able to contact
LMI> their servers -- if they have been careless enough to create a non-ASCII
LMI> user name or password.

I agree 100%.  I'm saying we should save the netrc/authinfo file in the
UTF-8 coding system instead of raw-text so Unicode characters in there
are usable by other programs too.  Forget the `auth-source-search'
callers, they won't know or care.  There will be no difference to their
usage or the data they get.

I believe random bytes can be encoded just fine by UTF-8.  If they are
read by a program that doesn't know UTF-8 that's a problem, but IMO we
can live with it and it's entirely theoretical.

Ted