Ideas for .no Gnus

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

Hello

Now that Oort is released, I'd like to throw some ideas in, which
features I as (primarily) a user would like to see in the next Gnus:

*themes*: It would be quite cool if people could export their settings
 for the various ...-line-format variables (especially
 gnus-summary-line-format) to a file so they can easily exchange them,
 Gnus could also include some predefined sets (e.g. classic, slrn-like,
 table-format...)

*configuration wizard*: This one is AFAIK already quite high in the todo
 list of Larsi, my idea would be short questions in the minibuffer and
 an explanation of what the user is supposed to answer in the active
 buffer, but there are probably other, better ways of implementing it.

*A fix for the "Gnus doesn't recognize connection loss problem"* I
 don't really know why, but for me Gnus fails to recognize it when a
 server silently drops connection, e.g. because of a timeout. Gnus
 should really automatically recognize this and restart connection
 without the need for the user to set some mystique variables (which
 only exist for nntp and not for e.g. nnimap)

*images in summary buffer* It would be nice, if it was possible to use
 small images instead of characters for the different marks in summary
 buffer.

*cache of seen message-ids* Discussed some threads above: Some solution
 which helps synchronizing .newsrc between two Gnus which read news
 from different servers would help all those who read e.g. at home from
 a Leafnode and at work from some other news server.

*Support for xpat and xhdr* For those of us who use Gnus for reading
 news an options to send a xpat search to the news server and create a
 summary buffer with the matching articles would be nice. Quite some of
 the required work should already be done in Kai Großjohanns nnir.el.

*Leaving messages on pop server* OK, there's epop3.el but it isn't
 actively maintained as far as I know, so perhaps it would be a good
 idea to tune Gnus' pop3.el instead.

*Nicer buttons* Some of the Gnus related buttons in the button bar are
 really nice, but some really don't fit in (e.g. "mark this message as
 [un]important")

Well, I could probably think of more, but those are the ones which I'd
like most. What do you think about them and which other ideas are there?

MFG Frank

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