Re: Emacs setup assistants

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> One project that's been on my mind (well, far back of my mind) for a
> few years has been to implement something that would make it easy to
> set up complex stuff by guiding the user through the process.
> 
> This differs from Customize by being a guided tour through the
> options, not just a big whopping menu of stuff to twiddle.
> 
> For instance, when setting Gnus up for reading news, an assistant
> would look around the environment for sensible news server defaults,
> present these to the user, ask for corrections, and at the end check
> whether the information given is sensible (ie., that the news server
> exists).  (That's a pretty trivial example; setting up spam handling
> or mail reading is much more complicated.  :-)
> 
> My original plan was to use something HTML-like, and use w3, but Per
> Abraahmsen suggested using something more TeXinfo like, and I thought
> that was a really groovy idea, so here's an example assistant
> specification.
> 
> (It's a mock-up; no code has been written, and most assistants would
> have more pages than one.)
> 
> -----------
> @title Configuring Gnus for reading news
> @node Server name and port
> @variable server :string (gnus-getenv-nntpserver)
> @variable port :number 119
> @validate
> (let ((stream
>         (condition-case err
>            (open-network-stream "nntpd" nil server port)
>           (error (setq error err)))))
>    (if (memq (process-status stream) '(open run))
>        (progn
>          (delete-process stream)
>          t)
>      nil)))
> @end validate
> @result gnus-select-method (list server port)
> @text
> To read Usenet news with Gnus, you first have to tell
> Gnus where the news server is.
> 
> The server name is @variable{server}; port number @variable{port}.
> @end text
> -----------
> 
> Rendering this is another issue.
> 
> I'm posting this here (on the Emacs and XEmacs development lists) to
> let all y'all know what's up, and get the loud objections that I'm
> sure are imminent...  :-)

Well, there currently is the possibility to say:

If you want to enable document parsing permanently, press @kbd{C-x
C-e} after the following expression:
@example
(progn (require 'tex)
       (customize-save-variable 'TeX-master nil "Manual"))
@end example

> And also -- would actually extending the texinfo.el parser be a good
> idea, or should I just roll my own (which would call texinfo.el
> functions, of course)?

I don't see what you are getting at.  Info files are not read by the
texinfo parser.  Is the question whether you should write your own
info reader?

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum