Re: message registry for Gnus

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Sat, 22 Feb 2003, larsi@gnus.org wrote:
> Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
> 
>> Is the data header for the article available somehow at the point
>> of cache insertion in nnmail.el?
> 
> No, the header data is being built by Gnus upon group entry.  When
> nnmail is snarfing mail, it has no such structure.

Hrm.  Can I put the spool hook at a later point, just after the header
data is available?

>> Also, to save a hashtable, it seems like I have to convert it to an
>> alist and put that in a file, and convert the other way when I want
>> to load from a file.  Is there an easier way?
> 
> No, that's the way to do it.  :-)  Hash tables (well, obarrays,
> really) don't (to use a Javaish term) serialize very well.

Could something like hashtable-to-alist-string and
hashtable-from-alist-string be added to the Gnus core?  It would make
my life easier, and I'm definitely not the person to write reliable
versions of these functions :)  I think these functions could probably
be useful in other places as well; I looked but found no such
functionality already in place.

Serialization would be a wonderful feature for Emacs Lisp in general.

Thanks!
Ted