Re: nnimap ports and protocols

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Fri, 01 Oct 2010 18:25:42 +0200 Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> wrote: 

LMI> Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>> My example on extending nnimap-stream could handle this (posted earlier
>> this morning in this thread).

LMI> Yes, that would work, but I find that variables that have complex
LMI> syntaxes (and we have enough of them) are something users fiddle with
LMI> and complain when they break, so if that could be avoided, it would be a
LMI> plus.

I see.  That's reasonable.

>> Yet another is to save a "nnimap-stream" token in the netrc file.

LMI> This is my current idea I had like five minutes ago, so it should be
LMI> great.  :-)  To take nnimap-stream as the example:

LMI> 1) we'd change the default to nil, signalling that we want Gnus to
LMI> figure it out on its own.  If it has a value, then the user has
LMI> obviously chosen it, which makes the rest of the stuff irrelevant.

OK.

LMI> 2) if it's nil, then we're in DWIM mode.  We then call
LMI> (nnimap-guess-connection-method server).  It'd try the stuff we talked
LMI> about earlier, and return its result.

LMI> 3) this is saved in a new Gnus/Emacs file, called...  er...
LMI> ~/emacs.d/emacs-memoize, which would have a format like

LMI> (nnimap connection-method ("imaps" ssl))

LMI> one per line, so that the user can edit it by hand, if necessary.  The
LMI> meaning here would be DOMAIN (so that many different packages can use
LMI> the same mechanism), TOKEN (that has some meaning in that domain), and
LMI> the VALUE.

That seems like a reinvention of the customize facility.  We can do a
non-interactive customization of `gnus-connection-preferences' for
instance and save the result.  I think that's better.

Also the connection preferences need to be keyed by server name/server
address regex with t as the default.

LMI> 4) nnimap would call this with the macro
LMI> (gnus-memoize 'nnimap 'connection-method
LMI>   (nnimap-guess-connection-method server))

LMI> So it's like a normal memoizer, only it saves stuff to a file, too.

LMI> Does this sound halfway sane?

If Customize is inadequate, I would put this in .newsrc.eld, not in a
special new file.  And I would allow `gnus-connection-preferences' to be
a function called with the server name.

Ted