danielv at netvision.net.il wrote:
> 
> John Hinsley <jhinsley at telinco.co.uk> wrote:>
> > It's really the difference (I think) between a Mac/Windows way of doing
> > things and a *nix way. On nixes, the dialler is absolutely distinct from
> > the Netscape or whatever application: the emailer  doesn't call the
> > dialler (nor does it assume a diallup connection), but will complain if
> > it's not connected. (I guess you could say that this is part of the *nix
> > paradigm: rather than having each program which requires diallup to have
> > it's own dialler, you write one good dialler and everything else can use
> > it.) Thinking of just how complex a peice of software a dialler is, and
> > that getting Celeste to grab the password from wherever whatever *nix
> > dialler is in use stores it would be a wee bit tricky, I'm not *that*
> > surprised that they wrote it as they did. And it probably also makes it
> > easier to use the same code for different OSs. Even though it does
> > require you to enter the password twice (and there may be security
> > implications in this).
> Or in other words, the Unix way is to create a strong abstraction, and
> maintain it. In this case, either your apps have TCP/IP connections
> available, or they don't. What do your socket using applications have
> with your ISP authentication?!? The Mac/Windows way is to create a user
> experience more users will accept (and if possible, that they won't like
> to let go of). Specifically, the user clicks on Netscape, and gets to
> look at their mail (if not understanding what's going makes this user
> less comfortable the first time they try to use an alternative, so much
> the better...). Except for the (very real and important) parts
> parenthesized, I agree equally with both kinds of reasoning.

I'd agree that neither is inherently wrong.
> 
> To me it's not very important to bring the dialing into Squeak (though
> I've considered a quick hack using OSProcess), which would be needed to
> make a model that handles both connecting and email together and
> conviniently.

Yes, that occured to me. But I'll probably not get round to it for a
long while: it wouild make the process of using Squeak as a desktop
replacement more comfortable. If you do do it, I'd love to see it.
> 
> > But no *nix email software will ask you for your password unless, I
> > guess -- you can't do this with the 4* series of Netscape -- you're
> > trying to grab mail from a server not belonging to the ISP you're hooked
> > up to.
> Actually, I'm pretty sure they would (ask). Do you have examples to the
> contrary?

This would mean me re-initialising everything, so can I get back to you
after I install SuSE 7.2 (probably 7.3 by then) around Christmas?

> 
> AFAIK - GNU/Linux at least, maintains a central list of usernames and
> passwords to be use in authentication when connecting to an ISP. These
> are called the "PAP (or CHAP) secrets" file. The same file is used
> whether you connect using a regular modem or an ADSL modem over
> ethernet, or whatever. 

Yes.wvdial (my favourite dialler) uses these. But I don't think that
kppp (which is more Windows like) does.

>However, there is no such common abstraction for
> "mail profiles". So I seriously doubt Netscape (or any of the mail
> clients I know for GNU/Linux) would try to autodetect my mail profile.
> But, having used Celeste for quite a while, I don't really know.
> 


Cheers

John
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Marx: "Why do Anarchists only drink herbal tea?"
Proudhon: "Because all proper tea is theft."
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