Re: Song of Programming

[Neil Crellin <neilc@wallaby.cc>]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
> Neil Crellin <neilc@wallaby.cc> writes:
> 
> > Somewhat tangential, but you reminded me of a wishlist item I'd been
> > meaning to raise.  How is one supposed to be able to run a gnus-slave
> > unplugged safely?  A gnus-slave-unplugged function which ensured that
> > both slave and gnus-unplugged were set correctly would be nice here.
> 
> Hm.   Is that something that one would do much?
>
> I'm a bit wary of adding commands that would multiply exponentially as 
> features are added...

I, for one, would use that a lot.  To give you an idea of the sort of
usage scenario I'm thinking of: I frequently have certain mail groups
with large backlogs I need to slog through, but want to be able to
continue to read new mail that comes in in a timely fashion, or I just
want to be able to take a break from the backlog slog and browse some
of my other groups without incurring the huge penalty of exiting and
re-entering the groups, expiring and generating new sorted scored
summary buffers for the big backlog group.  gnus-slave is ideal for
this sort of purpose, but only when plugged.  I can have two emacs
windows with one dedicated to the monster backlog, and the other for
taking breaks and catching up on other stuff without pain in the big
group window. 

To get the same sort of functionality unplugged is a challenge.
Currently, I set up a gnus master and a gnus-slave plugged, then J j
both of them to go unplugged and drop the connection.  Then I can
carry the laptop around the house or far away from the net connection.
I'd like to be able to do that without the convolution.

Currently gnus-plugged and gnus-unplugged just call (gnus) bare as
their last sub-call.  gnus-slave on the other hand accepts (& optional
arg) and invoke gnus with eg (gnus arg nil 'slave).  So one suggestion
is should gnus-unplugged and gnus-plugged take (&optional arg) and do
similar?  

Function gnus already handles dont-connect and slave as arguments. 
Since gnus-plugged and gnus-unplugged are just calls to gnus with
gnus-plugged set to t or nil beforehand, would it even make sense to
absorb gnus-plugged as an argument like those to gnus itself?  Or does
that only make sense for folks who've agentized?

Will this do what I need in the meantime?

(defun gnus-unplugged-slave (&optional arg)
  "Start Gnus slave unplugged."
  (interactive)
  (setq gnus-plugged nil)
  (gnus arg nil 'slave))

-- 
Neil Crellin <neilc@wallaby.cc>