Re: Documentation of nnoo.el

[Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:

>> Groups from primary servers aren't prefixed, while groups from
>> non-primary servers are...
>
> Ah, right. I guess I still don't see why it would be so terrible to lose
> that distinction, though...

It's not terrible -- it's just incompatible.  :-)

> Taking a step back, there are two general structural alterations I'd
> like to suggest. The first is splitting up the .newsrc.eld file a bit:
> right now it's sort of kitchen-sink, and feels fragile.

Actually, I think it's too transparent.  :-)  It almost looks
user-editable, which makes people edit it, and things blow up.  It's
also a cop-out, because we can say "well, just edit the file" instead of
providing proper interfaces to the data.

It's not like Firefox users open Firefox data files in an editor and
start typing away...

> The other proposal is the agent. I'm imagining the agent as a mix-in
> class for server backends. It would have many of the same methods as the
> servers, and would wait in the background until a server signaled a
> denied/no-connection/I'm-broken error. The agent would then set the
> server's "status" slot to closed or denied, and the agent's methods
> would check for that status and take over the action. That would allow
> the agent to potentially usurp any server functionality that the server
> itself was unable to perform.

I think you've pretty much described how the Agent works now.  :-)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no