Re: What now?

[Brian May <bmay@csse.monash.edu.au>]

>>>>> "Lars" == Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

    Lars> "Jody M. Klymak" <jklymak@apl.washington.edu> writes:
    >> I was also thinking that perhaps a hyper diary may be a nice
    >> thing.  The diary would accept hyperlinks (much the way that
    >> gnus does now, or Asvin Goel's Records Mode
    >> http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~ashvin/software.html).  Then you could
    >> write a lisp function to save your article to a text file (or
    >> mbox) and add a hyperlink to your diary.

    Lars> That sounds kinda neat.  If Gnus had a proper "refer article
    Lars> from outside of Gnus" function, Gnus could handle the
    Lars> "news:" URLs.

I think this would be really good. 

Another feature (one that doesn't look like its already implemented at
least) could be a "write new message with these headers" function,
that could be called, eg by w3. Currently, while w3 uses Gnus message
mode, major Gnus features, eg MIME and gnus-posting styles don't
appear to be supported. However, this would require co-operation
from w3.

    Lars> Gnus startup is slow and does lots of stuff, so such a
    Lars> function should just start up a minimal part of Gnus (unless
    Lars> it's already running), and not create the group or summary
    Lars> buffers, but just the article buffer and display the article
    Lars> there.  All normal Gnus commands for doing stuff with
    Lars> articles should be valid there.

Personally, I think Gnus is the type of mailer I try to keep running
all the time. Especially because it is slow to start up. Even if such
a function returned an error "Gnus not running", I think that would be
acceptable - especially if a lot of work is required to change things.

    Lars> This is easier typed than done, though.  All the article
    Lars> mode commands rely on the summary existing, and there are
    Lars> lots of commands that wouldn't be valid (like, `B c' -- you
    Lars> can't copy to another group if Gnus isn't "really" running,
    Lars> I'd think).

Perhaps, one day you may have to remove a lot of these assumptions
anyway. Why do article mode commands rely on the summary?

I tend to think it might be a benefit, in some circumstances,
to have an article window open, without the summary window. Not
that I feel to strongly about it.

    Lars> Hm.  Anobody got any suggestions as to how this could be
    Lars> achieved in a fashion that would not require Lots Of
    Lars> Work(tm)?

Do everything twice. Then it will no longer be "lots of work".
Instead, it will be "more then lots of work" ;-)

-- 
Brian May <bmay@csse.monash.edu.au>