nnextern.. backend??

nnextern.. backend??

[Andy Eskilsson]

Well as I might have said on this list (did I, or did I forget to post
it..) ahh well, I was looking for possibilities to read my hotmail
with Gnus, and started thinking.. 

Well basically I did a hotmail 'reader' (basic core, just pick out the
messages waiting and possibility do download them) in python, would
have done it in elisp if I knew the language.

I am looking into posting on hotmail too, doesn't seem too complex,
well it would be nice to be able to do stuff like this from inside
Gnus.

Would it be possible to have a backend that can execute an external
(to gnus) program/lisp code when getting articles and posting?
Communications with gnus probably only needs to be sending standard
mail format both ways??

This would be a nice function to hook onto companies internal
communication systems and so on. 

Maybe even some API callable through gnuserv or similar??

Just spawning... 

	/andy

Re: nnextern.. backend??

[Felix Lee]

> Would it be possible to have a backend that can execute an external
> (to gnus) program/lisp code when getting articles and posting?

if you can make your external program talk nntp protocol,
you can use nntp.el by setting the server's
nntp-open-connection-function to a function like this:

  (defvar nntp-my-program '("sloop" "-p" "-d" "-q" "bach"))
  (defun nntp-open-my-program (buffer)
    (save-excursion
      (set-buffer buffer)
      (erase-buffer))
    (apply 'start-process "nntpd" buffer nntp-my-program))

(this is what I'm doing in my first try at a compressed
reader protocol.)
--

Re: nnextern.. backend??

[Andy Eskilsson]

talk nntp protocol.. hmm sounds.. advanced :-) 

Would be a way if I want the external program to manage the articles,
but at the moment I only throw the articles into a nnfolder or nnmh
like thingy, maybe could throw them at /var/spool/mail and let gnus do
the rest :-)

Basically would it be interesting to define a API that Gnus can use
when talking to external programs? Something like 'call this program,
when it is finished look at ~/.gnus-crashbox' :-)

Or it would be nifty(TM) if we could handle the hotmail-boxes at
hotmail, but I would need some kind of expiry method, but well one of
the reasons to why I am doing this is that my mail was lost in a crash
and I haven't got hold of the hotmail staff who says the mail is
there.

	/andy