Re: [Evolution-hackers] ssl always/when-possible/never etc proposal

[Dan Winship <danw novell com>]

On Mon, 2004-08-23 at 16:06 -0400, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:
> Since there was confusion again today on the difference between
> always/whenever-possible, I guess it's a good time to bring this up.
> 
> I was thinking in the future, we could re-work the UI for the SSL
> options to look something more like this:
>
>   Use SSL: [Whenever Possible]
>   [ ] This server uses the SSL port rather than STARTTLS

Most users will have no clue what that means though.

> This would make the backend logic a little simpler too, because we
> would haven't try and guess which SSL method to use based on trial-
> and-error.

It would be nice if it could just try both possibilities the first time
you connect and then just remember (in gconf) which one worked, and use
that in the future. The same thing could be done for authentication
type. Instead of making the user choose between plaintext and CRAM-MD5
and NTLM and LOGIN, just assign a strength level to each SASL type, and
have the provider try each of the available ones in decreasing order of
strength until one of them works (only throwing CANT_AUTHENTICATE if
they all fail). Then remember the one that works and use that in the
future. (This is bug 10522.)

-- Dan