Reading Gnus (so to speak)

Reading Gnus (so to speak)

[Matt Pharr]

Somehow I've decided that it would be 'fun' to read some of gnus's source
code and learn a bit more about elisp and news along the way.  (I freely
admit that I'm a sicko, by the way.)  Qgnus v0.17 has a bit more than 60k
lines of *.el code, and I figure that printing and reading 500+ pages of
elisp is a bit excessive, so I'd be interested in hearing any suggestions
as to what parts not to miss and what's good to skip over.  (For starters,
I'm figuring that reading just a subset of the backends would be a good
idea, and I'll skip stuff like smiley.el, etc.)

thanks,
-matt
-- 
Matt Pharr                                   mmp@graphics.stanford.edu
<URL:http://www-graphics.stanford.edu/~mmp>

Re: Reading Gnus (so to speak)

[Kai Grossjohann]

>>>>> On 01 Dec 1997, Matt Pharr said:

  Matt> Somehow I've decided that it would be 'fun' to read some of
  Matt> gnus's source code and learn a bit more about elisp and news
  Matt> along the way.

I think that reading the backend source is a nice idea since the
backends have a well-defined interface to the rest of the system, so
you don't need to understand everything else to understand the bit
you're reading.  Also, the backends use nnoo.el which is a way to do
OO in Emacs Lisp, which is a nifty trick.

kai
-- 
`A wizard.  A ----ing wizard.  I *hate* ----ing wizards!'  `Well,
don't ---- him, then,' one of his henchmen said, effortlessly
pronouncing a row of dashes.  (Terry Pratchett)

Re: Reading Gnus (so to speak)

[SL Baur]

Matt Pharr <mmp@graphics.stanford.edu> writes:

> Somehow I've decided that it would be 'fun' to read some of gnus's source
> code and learn a bit more about elisp and news along the way.

Cool.

> (I freely admit that I'm a sicko, by the way.)

The desire to read source code is *not* a sign of a sick mind.

> Qgnus v0.17 has a bit more than 60k lines of *.el code,

Lars is a master programmer and Gnus is a program many people (including 
me) cannot live without.  I'd recommend etags'ing it and browsing it
in the emacsen of your choice.  I tried looking at listings at one
point but very quickly came to the conclusion that it was much easier
reading the source in emacs.  Keeping an RCS or CVS repository of the
source is also helpful.

Re: Reading Gnus (so to speak)

[Andy Eskilsson]

/ SL Baur <steve@xemacs.org> wrote:
| Matt Pharr <mmp@graphics.stanford.edu> writes:
| [...]
| > (I freely admit that I'm a sicko, by the way.)
| 
| The desire to read source code is *not* a sign of a sick mind.

Hey seen the last number of playcode? (*pant pant*) UUh I like the
fold-out in the middle, what a beauty, what indentation.. and the part
about worldly perversions with z80 assembler.. Can't wait until next
months feature, pascal-compilers on 8086's, I wonder when they will
have that picture of a stripped Pentium..

	/andy (Waiting for the people in white coats)

Re: Reading Gnus (so to speak)

[Matt Simmons]

>>>>> "Andy" == Andy Eskilsson <andy.eskilsson@telelogic.se> writes:

    Andy> I wonder when they will have that picture of a stripped
    Andy> Pentium..

Will it run faster than Lars' Ultra? =)

Matt

Re: Reading Gnus (so to speak)

[Wes Hardaker]

>>>>> On 02 Dec 1997 02:28:15 -0800, SL Baur <steve@xemacs.org> said:

>> (I freely admit that I'm a sicko, by the way.)

sb> The desire to read source code is *not* a sign of a sick mind.

No, but the desire to read *Gnus* code probably is :-)

Wes

(its not that its hard to follow, its just hard to find where to start)

Re: Reading Gnus (so to speak)

[Leonard Blanks]

>>>>> "sb" == SL Baur <steve@xemacs.org> writes:

 sb> Matt Pharr <mmp@graphics.stanford.edu> writes:
 >> Somehow I've decided that it would be 'fun' to read some of gnus's
 >> source code and learn a bit more about elisp and news along the
 >> way.

 sb> Cool.

 >> (I freely admit that I'm a sicko, by the way.)

 sb> The desire to read source code is *not* a sign of a sick mind.

Tell that to my ex-wife.  I had to be up early the next day and she
had the day off.  I put the book I had been reading on the floor and
went to sleep, whilst she continued reading, finished her book and,
being too lazy to dig into the bookshelf for another, decided to start
reading mine, which was Plauger's _The Standard C Library_; she did
tell me in the morning that it was on the whole less interesting than
Sußman's _Das Parfum_.

At the weekend we had friends over.  She brought the book out and
related the tale, which ended with her friends agreeing that there was
something not quite right about me and my friends asking to borrow the
book.


-- 
Len

It possesses a sound rhythmic structure and facilitates terpsichorean
movement; I'll give it an 85.