From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/57678 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Ted Zlatanov" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: new user assistant Date: 24 May 2004 09:52:07 -0400 Organization: =?utf-8?B?0KLQtdC+0LTQvtGAINCX0LvQsNGC0LDQvdC+0LI=?= @ Cienfuegos Sender: ding-owner@lists.math.uh.edu Message-ID: <4n65amj5ko.fsf@lifelogs.com> References: <4nd653nm2i.fsf@lifelogs.com> <4nzn86honu.fsf@lifelogs.com> <4nk6z9bk8n.fsf_-_@lifelogs.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1085407774 29937 80.91.224.253 (24 May 2004 14:09:34 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 14:09:34 +0000 (UTC) Cc: ding@gnus.org Original-X-From: ding-owner+M6218@lists.math.uh.edu Mon May 24 16:09:24 2004 Return-path: Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1BSG8p-0000Ue-00 for ; Mon, 24 May 2004 16:09:23 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1BSG8W-0008Hu-00; Mon, 24 May 2004 09:09:04 -0500 Original-Received: from util2.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.23]) by malifon.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1BSG8R-0008Hp-00 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Mon, 24 May 2004 09:08:59 -0500 Original-Received: from justine.libertine.org ([66.139.78.221] ident=postfix) by util2.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1BSG8P-0007mA-QL for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Mon, 24 May 2004 09:08:57 -0500 Original-Received: from mail.bwh.harvard.edu (sysblade0.bwh.harvard.edu [134.174.9.44]) by justine.libertine.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 43BC93A0036 for ; Mon, 24 May 2004 09:08:57 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: (qmail 24627 invoked from network); 24 May 2004 14:03:16 -0000 Envelope-Sender: tzz@lifelogs.com Envelope-Recipients: rdh@yottayotta.com, ding@gnus.org, Original-Received: from asimov.bwh.harvard.edu (HELO asimov) ([134.174.9.63]) (envelope-sender ) by mail.bwh.harvard.edu (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 24 May 2004 14:03:15 -0000 Mail-Followup-To: "Dale Hagglund" , ding@gnus.org Original-To: "Dale Hagglund" X-Face: bd.DQ~'29fIs`T_%O%C\g%6jW)yi[zuz6;d4V0`@y-~$#3P_Ng{@m+e4o<4P'#(_GJQ%TT= D}[Ep*b!\e,fBZ'j_+#"Ps?s2!4H2-Y"sx" In-Reply-To: (Dale Hagglund's message of "Sat, 22 May 2004 18:19:28 -0600") User-Agent: Gnus/5.110003 (No Gnus v0.3) Emacs/21.3.50 (gnu/linux) Precedence: bulk Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:57678 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:57678 On Sat, 22 May 2004, rdh@yottayotta.com wrote: > However, if the assistant is meant to help novice users set things up, > it should noted that they're the ones who are completely ignorant of > the meanings of nnml versus nnmaildir versus nnimap, etc, so a simple > menu for the backends actually won't help them very much. What would you suggest? At some point, a minimal knowledge of the desired mail storage is necessary, otherwise the user doesn't know what to ask for, and we can't teach them how files and directories work. For example, nnml is a very bad storage choice for home directories with small quotas - nnimap is much better in those cases. nnmaildir works better than nnml over NFS. If you have ideas, you don't have to write code. Write the text of the assistant, and I or other Gnus developers can fill in the code. > How would you write an assistant that tried to either (a) discover > what the user might want to do based on environment vars and other > pre-exisiting information, or (b) queried the user for such > information, and then presented him with a suitable (aye, there's the > rub) initial configuration? That's impossible. We can assist with tasks, but we can't make guesses that are almost certainly wrong. The number of possible configurations and the ways in which they can be guessed wrongly is much greater than what Gnus developers have time for, IMHO. > Do you want this language to be able to handle the maintenance of > configurations or just the initial creation of such a configuration? Just creation for now! It's hard enough to do an initial setup, I don't want to spend time creating a configuration maintenance system as well. > Ie, I have both nnml and nnimap mail groups in my gnus setup. Suppose > I used an assistant to set up my first nnml group. Would the language > you're thinking about support writing an assistant that would walk me > through adding a nnimap mailing group? There could be an assistant that *adds* a nnimap group. That's not too bad. Ted