Request: pretty-printing .newsrc.eld

Request: pretty-printing .newsrc.eld

[Lloyd Zusman]

[ This is an auto-generated, courtesy copy of a message that I've
  also posted to the gnu.emacs.gnus newsgroup. ]

I have a feature request:

Occasionally, I find myself needing to correct the results of my
hacking with Gnus's many options.  Sometimes the easiest way for me to
do this is to manually hack my .newsrc.eld file.

Yes, I know this is usually a horrible and evil thing to do, but
sometimes I just want to live dangerously. :)

Well, given that each `setq' within this file takes up a single line,
it is often a pain to wade through everything to get to the places I
where want to make my evil changes.

If .newsrc.eld were pretty-printed, this would be a lot easier for me.

Therefore, I'm wondering if we can have a new option that, when set,
would allow .newsrc.eld to be pretty-printed whenever it is saved.
Perhaps a good name for this option would be something like:

 gnus-pp-newsrc-file-yes-I-know-its-evil-to-manually-hack-this-newsrc-file

Of course, the default value of this proposed option would be `nil'.

Any thoughts?

-- 
 Lloyd Zusman
 ljz@asfast.com

Re: Request: pretty-printing .newsrc.eld

[Dan Christensen]

Lloyd Zusman <ljz@asfast.com> writes:
> If .newsrc.eld were pretty-printed, this would be a lot easier for me.

I have the following in my .gnus.el to accomplish this.  Not sure if
it is the best way to do it, but it works.

;; Save the .newsrc.eld file with extra line breaks.
(add-hook 'gnus-save-quick-newsrc-hook
'(lambda ()
   (gnus-message 4 "Breaking lines")
   (save-excursion
     (goto-char (point-min))
     (while (re-search-forward " *\\((\\\"\\)" nil t)
       (replace-match "\n\\1")))))

Dan