MIME composition (was: Storing the group a message has been written to)

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE writes:

> (1) This is truly horrible, one should not depend on such an
>     obfuscated fact.  Any suggestions for improving this?

We could document it, and rename the variable to something
reasonable. 

> (2) The group name is not unique.  Sometimes the group name is
>     `drafts' which comes from the nndraft server, sometimes the group
>     name comes from the normal nnml server.  I want to use this for
>     mail splitting.  Mail splitting deals with one backend only.
>     Thus, I would need to find out whether the group concerned is from
>     that backend and to ignore it if it doesn't come from the backend
>     where mail splitting is done.

Yes.  The mail fetching/splitting this is going to be redone, so that
instead of each mail backend trying to slurp in as much mail as
possible, there should be one slurping instance that dispathes the
mail to the backends where they should go.

Should I do that next, or is MIME composition more important?

Did we even discuss MIME composition?  How should it be done?

Here are some very, very general thoughts I have on this:

1) One should be able to create arbitrarily complex multiparts
2) The auto-save functions should work
3) Saving to drafts should work

I don't really see any easy way to do this...  Hm...  Invisible text
sucks...  Hm.

How about narrowing?

Say:

The user starts writing a message.  She hits the "insert an
attachment" command, which leads to the message being narrowed to what
was in the buffer before, and then a new message is appended outside
the narrowed region, which would, in this case, be in two parts -- the
text part, and the attachment parts.  Extra headers and separators
would enable nndraft to recreate the situation after a crash/save.

Well, ok, that's one (1) attachment, but how about fancier stuff?
What if she wants to remove the attachment and include two others
instead?  And multipart/alternative?  Er, what?

I just can't visualize how a MIME composition thingie could look. 

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen