Re: gnus/assistant.el

Re: gnus/assistant.el

[Reiner Steib]

On Fri, Nov 16 2007, Richard Stallman wrote:

> Would someone please delete gnus/assistant.el from the trunk

I don't say it's wrong to remove the file.  But I was hoping that it
attracts more developers if it was installed somewhere in Emacs along
with a TODO entry.

Having an "install wizard" / "setup assistant" (i.e. the functionality
`assistant.el' provides) would probably be useful for other Emacs
packages or tasks as well.  See the "screenshot below for an example"
(`assistant.el' is not specific to Gnus).

Already finished (to the point of actually being usable):

- Definition of a texinfo-like format (*.ast) for the setup steps

- Parsing and rendering the *.ast files, widgets, ...

Most important missing functionality, AFAICS:

- Setting the variables (put them into the customize block)

- Navigation (goto the next *.ast file)

Bye, Reiner.

,----[ *Assistant Configuring Gnus for the first time* ]
| Configuring Gnus for the first time
| 
| What do you want to do with Gnus?
| 
| Welcome to Gnus.  You need to tell us what you want to do with Gnus
| before we go on to specific configurations.
| 
| Choose the tasks you want to set up: 
| Set:
| [X] Read news via NNTP
| [ ] Read mail, store it locally
| [X] Read mail and store it on an IMAP server
| 
| 
| Choose the method Gnus will use to send mail: 
| (*) Send mail via sendmail
| ( ) Send mail via SMTP
| 
| 
| [<< Go back to What do you want to do with Gnus?][Reset]
| [Proceed to Setting up a NNTP server >>]
`----
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: gnus/assistant.el

[Richard Stallman]

    I don't say it's wrong to remove the file.  But I was hoping that it
    attracts more developers if it was installed somewhere in Emacs along
    with a TODO entry.

That might perhaps happen, I don't think it is a good idea to install
not-yet-working packages in Emacs.