Re: OffGnus

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no>]

Rich Pieri <rich.pieri@prescienttech.com> writes:

> LMI> 3)  nnsoup.  Using soup is quite fiddly, but it basically seems to
> LMI> work.
> 
> Like #1, yes on Unix.  I have been demonstrably unsuccessful in getting
> nnsoup to work on my Windows 95 machine, most probably due to the poor
> handling of I/O streams in the console mode API.

I got it to work pretty well last Xmas when I was stuck on a Windos 95
box...  It's too fiddly, though.  Not sexy at all.

> LMI> So -- I propose writing a new backend for Gnus provide similar
> LMI> functionality.  I don't know what to call it (nnoff?  nnoffline?  I
> LMI> don't really like the word "offline".), but I'm sure that someone will
> LMI> come up with a good name.  Right?
> 
> nntpol, since this will basically be nntp with off-line extensions.

No; it will handle both mail and news, and won't be restricted to nntp
at all.  For instance, some may dial up their ISP, NFS mount the news
spool and tell the offline backend to fetch all the news from that,
and then hang up and read the mail from the offline backend.  So the
offline backend (when fetching news) will simply do that by accessing
some other Gnus backend.

nnagent?  

> I suggest a merger between nntp.el and nnml.el.  This "new" backend will
> use nntp's code to slurp news from the server and nnml's code to store
> and read it locally.  For outgoing mail we need smtpmail.el (which is
> distributed with GNU Emacs, now) and smtpmail_delay (or smtpmailq, as I
> prefer), which is a simpler setup than feedmail.  For outgoing news,
> message-post-method (or whatever) should be pointed at a queueing
> function, and then a "foo-post-queued-news-now" function (which can be
> added to whatever desired exit hooks or invoked manually) which
> processes the queue.

I think all outgoing news and mail should be stored in a special
folder, and that the offline backend should run the queue when the
connection has come up.  

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@ifi.uio.no * Lars Ingebrigtsen