Re: Wizards! I mean, Assistants!

["Ted Zlatanov" <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Sun, 16 May 2004, larsi@gnus.org wrote:

> There are two areas of difficulty here:
> 
> 1) Specifying these Assistants.  If it's boring to write them, and
>    they're difficult to maintain, that'd suck.  And they'd not get
>    written.

I think this is the important part right now.

> 2) Rendering the Assistants.  If they aren't pleasant to use, then
>    that'd suck.

I agree, but I think this should come once (1) is done.  Perhaps a
very simple q&a renderer (nothing but minibuffer queries) should be
the first step for testing.

> <page 1>
> (!valid
> (let ((stream
>         (condition-case err
>            (open-network-stream "nntpd" nil server port)
>           (error (setq error err)))))
>    (if (memq (process-status stream) '(open run))
>        (progn
>          (delete-process stream)
>          t)
>      nil)))
> (!result (gnus-select-method (list server port)))
> So you want to read news.  The news server to use
> is (?server (gnus-getenv-nntpserver));
> port number (?port 119).
> </page>

There should be distinct sections for expected variables,
initialization, validation, resetting, and undo (going back).  They
won't always be used, but the ability should be there.  This is how I
would do it (to be parsed by ELisp):

(assistant-pages
 (assistant 'nntp-server "NNTP server setup" 1 ; assistant name, title, page#
 '((produces '(server string) '(port integer))

  (initialize
   server (gnus-getenv-nntpserver)
   port 119)

  (reset 'redo-initialize)

  (undo 'redo-initialize)

  (validate 
   (server port) 'user-override [open-network-stream code goes here])

 So you want to read news.  The news server to use is `server'; port
 number `port'.
)))

The (produces) section is crucial.  It lets us specify the exact thing
this assistant will create, and further assistant pages can use these
variables also.

For validation, there should be a way to specify that the user can
override the validation or not; for instance the NNTP server may be
down but still it needs to be made active.

Just some ideas...

Ted