Re: gnus and imap

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Sun, 24 Aug 2008 10:47:52 +0200 Vitaly Mayatskikh <v.mayatskih@gmail.com> wrote: 

VM> It might be a good idea to extend api of back ends. 

Agreed.  Can you propose specific changes?

VM> By the way, have Gnus developers any plans of doing large changes in
VM> Gnus, like refactoring, global cleanup, etc?

I don't know of such plans.  Considering the code works well for many
people, it's been in use for a long time, and that it's one of the
largest Emacs Lisp packages, I think such work has to have some clearly
defined goals and benefits.  I know there's issues with direct access to
the data structures in many places (which you've found while makings
your IMAP fixes) and with handling of multibyte strings.  The code is
tightly coupled so refactoring and cleanup are a lot of work.

A complete rewrite might be a better idea.  It is expensive and
dangerous, but also it's a chance to take advantage of many years of
experience with Gnus usability and features.  Maybe this should be the
next version of Gnus (6.x).

Ted