[Pan-devel] Re: new on/offline system

[Charles Kerr]

On Mon, May 06, 2002 at 06:50:07PM +0200, Colin Leroy wrote:
> On Mon, 6 May 2002 09:22:36 -0700 Charles Kerr <address@hidden>
> wrote:

>> two, would you like to stick on backports for awhile, or would you also
>> be interested in a bit of new code?  If so, would you like to take a
>> stab at xml-izing the queue?  Take a look at what filters-xml.c does to
>> the filters hierarchy; the task stuff will work the same way.  The first
>> step is to write a dtd and get the task xml writer working.

> Why not ! The only problem is that as long as I install gtk2 and libiconv
> (it doesn't work without), it breaks my gtk1 compilations :-/

That's interesting, how so?
I'm able to compile in both worlds on my Linux box...

> But why xml-izing the queue ? Allow it to be saved in order to have it run
> again after pan's relaunch ? If I understood well it could be a nice idea
> :)

[I'm cc'ing this to pan-devel so they'll know the scoop too.]

xml-izing the queue is a first step for a few things.  The first, obvious
feature is, as you said, to resume tasks when you restart Pan.  After I
finish converting the queue to take batch requests, Pan will be able to
assume "save the task list to disk after each batch insertion".  Then if
Pan is shut down or crashes, when it restarts it can give a galeon-like
dialog "restart the tasks that were running?" dialog.

This will also allow us, without too much work, to run a gui-less Pan that
simply starts up, runs the tasks from a queue file, and exits.  This could
be used for batch leeching (which is what lots of people have requested),
and could also be used as a slrnpull-type utility (which I think would be
neat).

cheers,
Charles