Re: overview -> .db files?

[Wes Hardaker <wes@hardakers.net>]

>>>>> On Thu, 31 Oct 2002 19:21:44 +0100, kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) said:

Kai> But I think there are already provisions for using headers
Kai> instead of NOV format.  So maybe that's a spot where you can hook
Kai> in and return the headers to Gnus in a Lisp data structure
Kai> without going via a buffer.

Yeah, I realized it would likely affect both the place where Gnus and
the backends were involved.  Essentially functions would have to wrap
access to NOV calls, and what the NOV calls did behind the scenes
would either look stuff up in a list (as is now) or in a DB.

Kai> It would be a major undertaking.  Please work on it :-)

Doubtful.  I suspect it'd be a bit over my head with respect to gnus
code.  I'm sure I could do it, but the undertaking would be even
larger for me ;-)

Kai> Another possibility which might be easier is to keep the backend
Kai> interface and to just use the db files as a faster way to extract
Kai> the right headers.

Yeah, I thought of that as well.  Actually, just making the overview
files be .el files would probably be a big win.

Kai> At least for me, the slow part about using Gnus is the generation of
Kai> the summary buffer.  I wonder if that can be made faster somehow.

Yeah.  The patch I wrote a while ago to display the summary buffer as
it's building it is a good thing, because it lets you view stuff to at
least keep you occupied while it's building.

(I've been bugging my boss about his half of the assignment rights for
it as well as the nnsf code, but he's a busy guy)

Kai> Is there a way to create a buffer with a lot of text properties and
Kai> stuff really quickly?  What happens if we princ (buffer-string) to a
Kai> file and then read that representation into memory and use a single
Kai> insert call to create a buffer from it?

That's worth trying.

I've often thought that on exiting a summary buffer, you have all the
display information since you've already created it, so couldn't we
save the current buffer to a file, reload it and reapply all the
regions and insert new contents?  That *may* be faster than rebuilding
it from scratch every time.

-- 
"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will
 insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."   -- Terry Pratchett