From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/35811 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Per Abrahamsen Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Wizards and W3 integration (was: Re: A road map for Oort Gnus) Date: 14 Apr 2001 16:42:18 +0200 Organization: The Church of Emacs Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035171500 5065 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 03:38:20 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 03:38:20 +0000 (UTC) Cc: wmperry@aventail.com (William M. Perry) Return-Path: Original-Received: (qmail 10690 invoked by alias); 14 Apr 2001 14:42:43 -0000 Original-Received: (qmail 10685 invoked from network); 14 Apr 2001 14:42:42 -0000 Original-Received: from sheridan.dina.kvl.dk (130.225.40.227) by gnus.org with SMTP; 14 Apr 2001 14:42:42 -0000 Original-Received: from ssv2.dina.kvl.dk (ssv2.dina.kvl.dk [130.225.40.226]) by sheridan.dina.kvl.dk (8.9.3/8.9.3/Debian 8.9.3-21) with ESMTP id QAA20106; Sat, 14 Apr 2001 16:42:18 +0200 Original-Received: from abraham by ssv2.dina.kvl.dk with local (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 14oRFi-0002GK-00; Sat, 14 Apr 2001 16:42:18 +0200 Original-To: ding@gnus.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Face: +kRV2]2q}lixHkE{U)mY#+6]{AH=yN~S9@IFiOa@X6?GM|8MBp/ In-Reply-To: (Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen's message of "14 Apr 2001 15:12:47 +0200") User-Agent: Gnus/5.090001 (Oort Gnus v0.01) Emacs/20.7 Original-Lines: 71 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:35811 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:35811 Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen writes: > Per Abrahamsen writes: > > > It would need some more work to be really useful, but the real problem > > is that w3 is not integrated in Emacs. WM Perry hasn't time to do > > more than minimal maintainence, and nobody else have volunteered to > > take over w3 or w3 integration. > > I think that w3 is an essential Emacs component. That was my standpoint 7 years ago, and still is. > These days, most information is out there on the Web, and to access > that, we need the URL library and the HTML parsing functions. In > short, w3. It's going to become even more vital in the future, what > with all these XML-RPC/SOAP thingies that are rearing their heads. > > Are anybody at the FSF dealing with these issues? If "wishing someone would take up the project" counts as dealing, then yes. > It's not impossible that funding could be found for such a project, > if that's the issue. (I suspect that it's more a question of time.) I think so too. You need someone who is smart enough to understand both Emacs and W3, yet stupid enough to volunteer. Ops, did I say stupid? I meant, eh, "have time enough to spare". > > I think using w3 would be the ultimate solution, but we could invent > > an ad-hoc markup language for the purpose. > > I think that would be counter-productive. w3 is the way. I agree. However, that notion have delayed wizards for 7 years now. > Who do we bug to get things set in motion? (I've Cc'd this to > Bill.) I have CC'ed it to the Emacs developers list, both Setup Wizards and W3 integration are big questions that affect all of Emacs, not just Gnus. > > Depending on how much control is needed, it could be build upon either > > custom or the widget library. I don't think the programming part will > > be that hard, the real challenge would be designing the wizards > > themselves. > > If we had a proper framework for building wizards, I think writing the > wizards themselves would be quite a lot of typing; yes, but not very > complicated typing. It is not the typing that is hard, but the design. What are the really important questions for this application? Which things can be safely assume? How can we prensent the concept in a way the average user can understand? > I envision a kind of rule-based framework. "The user has input this > and this information, and this and this exists on the system, so we > present the user with this information and these choices." > > I don't think writing that kind of framework would be trivial... I envision a markup language with embedded widgets and embedded Lisp. Trivial stuff to implement, in fact, Bill Perry have already implemented it (not that W3 is trivial, but this part is). It just needs to be integrated, and an example wizard. As we get practical experience from writing wizards, we would write more widgets and more Lisp functions, making the progress evolutionary.