Re: nnml-directory not customizable

[David Z Maze <dmaze@MIT.EDU>]

Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com> writes:

> OK, now I get it. But there's a catch. I'd like to have something like
> the following in my customize-set-variables stanza:
>
>   '(gnus-secondary-select-methods (quote ((nnml "" (nnml-directory (expand-file-name "lists" message-directory))))))
>   ...
>   '(message-directory "~/var/mail/")
>
> It would be nice not to have to hard-code the path to the nnml-directory
> in the secondary select method so I only have to modify
> message-directory if my directory changes.
>
> Any thoughts?

backquote!  While I'm not terribly familiar with customize's
interface, I'd write this as

(setq message-directory "~/var/mail"
      gnus-secondary-select-methods
        `((nnml "" (nnml-directory
                    ,(expand-file-name "lists" message-directory)))))

So at setq time, message-directory is set, then the expand-file-name
is evaluated and its contents are inserted into
gnus-secondary-select-methods.  I really doubt this would play nicely
with customize at all, though (it's not going to have much luck
unparsing the backquoted form, so if you updated custom with other
things your code will probably get overwritten).  And it is dependent
on the order of definition.

  --dzm