Re: Inefficiency in mm-uu.el

[Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr>]

Shenghuo ZHU <zsh@cs.rochester.edu> writes:

> >>>>> "HN" == Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:
> 
> HN> The uuencode interface to mm seems very inefficient, because of
> HN> two separate reasons.  When I `g' a message containing a, say, an
> HN> uuencoded image, it insists on decoding the uuencoded region (I
> HN> can tell by the time `g' takes and by the conducted profiles.)
> 
> HN> When I click on the image button to show it, it decodes it again.
> HN> Why this double encoding?
> 
> The first decoding is due to mm-inlinable-p. With the attached
> patch, each type is tested at most once in a session.

Cool, thanks.

> HN> The other question is about the strange default -- the code
> HN> defaults to using the internal, elisp-based decoding, even when
> HN> a perfectly valid `uudecode' is found on the system.  This makes
> HN> decoding of large stuff (and uuencoded stuff is large, more
> HN> often than not) abysmally slow, even on very very fast machines.
> HN> I can imagine that on slower machines it's closer to "unusable".
> 
> Do you mean to automatically setup mm-uu-decode-function by
> searching uudecode on the system at loading time of mm-uu.el?

Yes.

> If so, please feel free to patch it.

Yes, if Lars will accept the patch.  I seem to recall he said
something about "not trusting external programs" for base64, so I
don't know if it applies to uuencode.  Lars?

-- 
Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> | Student at FER Zagreb, Croatia
--------------------------------+--------------------------------
You know it's going to be a bad day when your twin brother forgot
your birthday.