Re: Lots of Topics

[larsi@ifi.uio.no (Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen)]

John Griffith <griffith@sfs.nphil.uni-tuebingen.de> writes:

> 1) I would like an option to only show topics if there is something
>    unread-ish in it.

I've added this to the Red Gnus todo list.

>    I have not checked the code to find out exactly what's going on
>    and have not tried this in a few versions, but it seemed that the
>    topic hierarchy was being rebuilt after exiting groups.  If this
>    happens, is it necessary?

Nope.  Gnus would do nearly as much work when exiting from a groups as
when doing `l'.  0.55 should fix that problem.

> 3) What about non-unique names for topics?
> 
>    I realize this would require a new data structure to record paths
>    in the topic hierarchy, but I at least would find it useful to use
>    topic names more than once.  A simple example:
> 
>    Artificial Intelligence
>       Programming Languages
>          comp.lang.prolog
>          comp.lang.lisp
>    Information Systems
>       Programming Languages
>          comp.lang.java

Yes, I can see how that might be convenient, but it might make things
kinda awkward.  Hm.  Instead of using topic names as internal
indentifiers, one could add an extra layer on top to get unique
keys...  I've added this to the Red Gnus todo list as well, but I'm
not promising anything.

> 4) What about "linked" topics?
> 
>    Ie. topic graphs rather than topic trees.  Then you could have
>    symmetric topics like:
> 
>    Artificial Intelligence
>       Programming Languages    [a]
>    Information Systems
>       Programming Languages    [b]
>    Programming Languages
>       Artificial Intelligence  [a]
>       Information Systems      [b]
> 
>    where "Artificial Intelligence:Programming Languages" is the same
>    set of groups as  "Programming Languages:Artificial Intelligence".

This one makes my head hurt.  If topic A can be inside topic B and
topic B is a sub-topic of topic A, then, uhm, things get rather
unprintable.  

Even so, it's definitely doable.  I don't think the dramatically
increased complexity would justify the rather meagre (in my opinion)
gains. 

-- 
  "Yes.  The journey through the human heart 
     would have to wait until some other time."