Re: ... and now for something completely different: User Friendliness

[Frank Schmitt <usereplyto@Frank-Schmitt.net>]

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

> Now, the most obvious thing to do is to just write them in Lisp, and
> I definitely don't want to do that.

What a pity.

> (if (string= (getenv "NNTPSERVER") "")
>     (if (query "You don't seem to have set a news server,
> so do you want to use Gnus to read news or mail?")
>          (setq news-server (quert "Ok, then gimme the
> name of the news server"))))
>
> Eek.  It's a readability nightmare.

That depends. Define 

gnus-wizard-look-for-nntp-server
gnus-wizard-look-for-pop3-server
gnus-wizard-look-for-spool-file

and 

(gnus-wizard-get-nntp-server-from-user &opt proposed-server)
(gnus-wizard-get-pop-server-from-user &opt proposed-server)

...

And stuff already looks much better.

> The same is the case with anything that looks like HTML with embedded
> program statements.  If you write PHP with lots of strings and stuff
> in between, it soon just gets too ugly to be fun.

And the user needs an apache or alike on his system.

> So -- any good ideas?  Surely somebody must have come up with a nice
> solution here...
>
> The other question is -- how to render the user interface?  Again,
> Customize has lots of stuff for that, and might be a likely
> contender.  The other is HTML and w3.  Any other ideas?

Whatever you do, remember that there are other systems then
Linux/FreeBSD running Gnus, e.g. MacOS or Windows. Your solution should
work on those systems, too so I'd still vote for a wizard in Emacs Lisp,
asking the user in Minibuffer and some explanation on what he should
input in a buffer above.

-- 
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.