Re: Me and my nnextern..

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

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

> Well basically I have a program that fetches mail from you hotmail
> account, and currently puts it into a normail mail folder (it is
> easily modified for other output).

You could just set `nnmail-spool-file' to wherever you stored the mail
and let your mail backend slurp it in.

> Well now comes the funny part, I would like to POST through hotmail
> too, it is just a hack or two away ;-)
> 
> Am I the only one who see a use of a nnextern backend?? So it is easy
> (for us non-lispers) to hack an interface to for example supernews
> mail, supernews (WREN) web reading news, sexzilla.com's webnews(yeah I
> know, I only read it for alt.sex.furniture^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H), some
> basic webboards! (Now that would be a hit, nnwebboard backend!)

It's not clear to me what you want, really.

We already have backends that communicate with external programs.
nnweb, nntp and (soon) nnimap, to name a few.  (I've just written
nnlistserv which reads Majordomo (etc.) web archives.)  All these use
vastly different external interfaces, but deliver the same data to
Gnus.

What you seem to want is a backend that will allow you to write simple
external programs that feed data to Gnus.  My suggestion would simply
be to write nntp-like interfaces, and just use nntp.el.  If you feel
that this is a too heavy protocol (it isn't, really; you just don't
implement the "tricky" functions.  GROUP, HEAD and ARTICLE is all that
is required), then I would be open to adding a new, generic nnextern
backend that talks the protocol you would like it to talk.

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