From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/27641 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Bruce Stephens Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: What to do next? Date: 03 Dec 1999 23:14:30 +0000 Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: <87zovrmxbd.fsf_-_@cenderis.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035164631 25613 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 01:43:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 01:43:51 +0000 (UTC) Return-Path: Original-Received: from bart.math.uh.edu (bart.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.48]) by sclp3.sclp.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA19853 for ; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 18:27:33 -0500 (EST) Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (lists@Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by bart.math.uh.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id RAB08738; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 17:27:12 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Fri, 03 Dec 1999 17:27:18 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com (root@sclp3.sclp.com [204.252.123.139]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA01945 for ; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 17:27:07 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from finch-post-10.mail.demon.net (finch-post-10.mail.demon.net [194.217.242.38]) by sclp3.sclp.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA19838 for ; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 18:26:41 -0500 (EST) Original-Received: from cenderis.demon.co.uk ([193.237.0.193]) by finch-post-10.mail.demon.net with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 11u263-000Oca-0A for ding@gnus.org; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 23:26:39 +0000 Original-Received: by cenderis.demon.co.uk (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 5BB582A5A4; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 23:26:35 +0000 (GMT) Original-To: ding@gnus.org User-Agent: Gnus/5.070099 (Pterodactyl Gnus v0.99) XEmacs/21.2 (Mercedes) Original-Lines: 68 Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:27641 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:27641 I can't think of anything big like MIME, unless you count asynchronous operation. [Caveat, I haven't dared try the various asynchronous settings, so maybe everything important has already been done. I doubt it, though.] There are some largish minor things, though. 1. Some kind of calendar stuff (which probably requires coordinating with whoever maintains calendar). I ought to be able to snarf vcalendar things from mail, and output things in vcalendar. (Similarly for vcard and BBDB, of course.) 2. Support for MIME-based security. I seem to remember there were some issues with Gnus's MIME API and handling such that PGP/MIME, for example, couldn't be easily hooked in. This'll presumably also be the case for S/MIME (and this is now an issue, since OpenSSL 0.9.5 is supposed to be including simple S/MIME tools, so there'll be freely available S/MIME stuff). I think this should be fixed, so that we can interoperate with people using lesser email clients. 3. Client-side annotating would be cool. I'm not sure exactly what I want, but attaching notes to messages, and dates (or maybe I mean attaching email to places in my calendar?). Not sure what this should feel like. 4. Really clean text/enriched support. I ought to be able to type a message, using the menu to change text to bold/italic/etc., and when I send it, Gnus should ask whether I really want to annoy people by sending text/enriched. It can transparently format the text anyway, to provide a multipart/alternative with a text/plain (with bold marked with asterisks and stuff) and a text/enriched. I think this is much how Outlook Express does things, only it inflicts text/html on people, and does the plain text badly. (Having got text/enriched, I guess Gnus could produce text/html quite easily, too.) I'm sure someone wrote a patch for this, but I don't see any evidence of it, so it's obviously too well hidden for idiots like me to use. 5. Support for real databases. (And Directories, I guess, although LDAP's should probably be more of a BBDB thing.) There ought to be a backend designed for really large archives which can throw its data into some real database. Hmm, maybe the general support things (like the stuff that reads and writes .newsrc.eld) could be abstracted such that I could replace it with either db or an SQL database? (Maybe it already is abstracted, of course.) More generally, although glimpse searching is good, for some things a more structured search would be nice, so I could get a list of all articles from some particular person, say, or a list of articles which are followups to articles by some person. Or something. So it would be cool if I could set Gnus up to automatically keep an SQL database fed with suitable information (removing information about expired articles, of course), and have some cool way of interrogating the database. (Actually, a cool way of interrogating SQL databases would be useful in its own right.) Hmm. I think the MIME for security stuff and the text/enriched support come highest on my list, and I think they're doable. I'm not sure about the others---they look a bit more vague, and maybe they wouldn't work out. If I had to vote, I'd vote for cleaning up the MIME API such that it doesn't break signatures and can easily be used by mailcrypt-like packages, and adding text/enriched support that's as easy to abuse as Outlook Express's text/html.