Re: Turning Gnus groups into real objects

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> (defclass gnus-server ()
>>   ((address :type string)
>>   ...))
>>
>> (defclass gnus-nnimap (gnus-server)
>>   ((capabilities
>>     :type string)
>>    (newlinep
>>     :type boolean)
>>    ...))
>
> Aka
>
>     (cl-defstruct (gnus-server)
>       (address nil :type string))
>
>     (cl-defstruct (gnus-nnimap
>                    (:include gnus-server))
>       (capabilities nil :type string)
>       (newlinep     nil :type boolean))
>
>> (cl-defmethod gnus-request-list ((server gnus-nnimap))

Aw... I was also considering a bit of (tastefully designed) multiple
inheritance.

> BTW, I was wondering whether we could preserve backward compatiblity with
> defvoo and defffoo.  But I guess for `defvoo`, we'd need the equivalent
> of `define-symbol-macro` whereas we currently only have `cl-symbol-macrolet`.

That would be an interesting thing to have for many reasons. But here it
seems like it would mainly be useful to support backends defined outside
of Gnus, in which case we'd also have to cover `nnoo-declare' and
friends, and... yuck.