Re: MML: The Summation

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

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"Edward J. Sabol" <sabol@alderaan.gsfc.nasa.gov> writes:

> I definitely agree that the user should be able to edit the buffer properly
> and cut, copy, and paste MIME things between message buffers. But surely this
> could be implemented? It would probably be difficult to implement, but
> impossible? I find that hard to believe.

This is Emacs; nothing is impossible.

However, Emacs' strength is its brilliant text editing commands --
they work; they work well and they work all the time.  The newer bits
-- text props, overlays, invisible text -- do not work nearly as
well.  Text props have a tendency to bleed if one is not careful; they 
aren't always preserved; they aren't saved; but most importantly of
all (in my opinion), is that the user usually has no way of inspecting 
them.

A text prop based MIME interface (with the required write file hooks
to preserve them) is certainly possible, but...

> I think that with the user interface that I'm dreaming of the user wouldn't
> have to enter "<part>" in his text in order to switch from Chinese text to
> Japanese text. The very fact that the Chinese text is using a Chinese font
> and the Japanese text is in a Japanese font gives enough information for the
> MIME user-interface to know that they are two different parts and to have the
> appropriate MIME information inserted either after the user hits `C-c C-c' to
> send the message or on the fly when the user changes fonts using some
> invisible text or other marker.

Yes.  But if I want to write a Norwegian character and a Japanese
glyph in the same article, Message would have to break that up into a
multipart message, either automatically or by user intervention.  For
instance, Message could go over an article paragraph by paragraph, and 
see whether each paragraph can validly be written in some charset or
other, and if not, it could ask the user for help.  But I'm (as
always) a bit leery of interfaces that try to guess what the user
wants.  

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If I want to talk about Morioka (守岡 知彦) and one of my sisters,
that can't be done in the same part...

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... but I can mention my sister Åse here.

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But perhaps this is a rather esoteric question, and not something that 
should be a primary consideration when designing the MIME user
interface. 

> But then there's the question of multipart/alternative and nested
> multiparts and how to compose those. That wouldn't be quite so easy,
> but I don't think it needs to be and I'm sure something could be
> figured out. Like possibly highlighting some number of adjacent
> parts with transient-mark-mode on and then hitting some key combo to
> signify that the parts are alternative or nested.

I'm against marking parts and then issuing commands.  :-)  I like to
enter commands to make things happen; not futzing around with the
cursor a lot, and then making things happen.

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