Re: Ideas for .no Gnus

[kai.grossjohann@gmx.net (Kai Großjohann)]

Frank Schmitt <usereplyto@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:

> *themes*: It would be quite cool if people could export their settings
>  for the various ...-line-format variables (especially
>  gnus-summary-line-format) to a file so they can easily exchange them,
>  Gnus could also include some predefined sets (e.g. classic, slrn-like,
>  table-format...)

Themes will take a long time, but maybe some useful steps could be
taken without themes.  For instance, the custom setting for
gnus-summary-line-format could include some pre-made choices which
users can just choose.

gnus-summary-line-format could also refer to some variables that
people can tune, once they have chosen a read-made choice.  For
instance, the width of the authors column could be such a tunable.

So with less effort, part of the effect can be achieved.

Hm.  Oh, wait, this was actually for the item below.  Argh.  Sorry.

But also it would help if you could tell users to just choose
srln-like from the customization menu for gnus-summary-line-format.

> *configuration wizard*: This one is AFAIK already quite high in the todo
>  list of Larsi, my idea would be short questions in the minibuffer and
>  an explanation of what the user is supposed to answer in the active
>  buffer, but there are probably other, better ways of implementing it.
>
> *A fix for the "Gnus doesn't recognize connection loss problem"* I
>  don't really know why, but for me Gnus fails to recognize it when a
>  server silently drops connection, e.g. because of a timeout. Gnus
>  should really automatically recognize this and restart connection
>  without the need for the user to set some mystique variables (which
>  only exist for nntp and not for e.g. nnimap)

I'm afraid it has to be done in the backends.  But it should be
fairly easy to implement -- there aren't *that* many backends that
speak a network protocol.

> *images in summary buffer* It would be nice, if it was possible to use
>  small images instead of characters for the different marks in summary
>  buffer.

Yes.

> *cache of seen message-ids* Discussed some threads above: Some solution
>  which helps synchronizing .newsrc between two Gnus which read news
>  from different servers would help all those who read e.g. at home from
>  a Leafnode and at work from some other news server.

Whee.  Lars is saying that this is *really* difficult.

> *Support for xpat and xhdr* For those of us who use Gnus for reading
>  news an options to send a xpat search to the news server and create a
>  summary buffer with the matching articles would be nice. Quite some of
>  the required work should already be done in Kai Großjohanns nnir.el.

I'm afraid I haven't looked closely at the copyright situation with
nnir.el, so maybe it can't be included in Gnus.  I also wonder
whether it has the right architecture.  So I wonder if a rewrite
would be in order, that's included in Gnus right away?

> *Leaving messages on pop server* OK, there's epop3.el but it isn't
>  actively maintained as far as I know, so perhaps it would be a good
>  idea to tune Gnus' pop3.el instead.

Yes.  It can't be that difficult, and I actually started on it, but
got nowhere fast.

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