Re: Wizards and W3 integration (was: Re: A road map for Oort Gnus)

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

"Eli Zaretskii" <address@hidden> writes:

> Windows users might know what setup wizards are (assuming that _I_
> understood you correctly), but others probably don't.  Regardless,
> someone should probably post a summary of the problem and previous
> discussions for those on emacs-devel who don't read ding.

A "setup wizard" is a program that guides you through setting up
something.  As opposed to preference settings, a wizard lets you take
only certain steps, and checks that the steps are reasonable.

Let's take the simplest wizard possible: Starting reading news (and
only news) with Gnus.  The wizard would ask (after checking the
environment as determining that the user has no previous preference)
-- "do you want to read news from a local spool or from a news
server?"  If the user answers "local spool", the wizard would check
whether there is a spool in any of the usual places, and if it finds
one, it will suggest using that spool.  If not, it will tell the user,
and let the user determine what to do.  (For instance, going back to
choosing a news server.)  The user says "news server", the wizard will
try pinging "news.<isp-name>" to see whether that exists, and if it
does, present that as the choice, and if not, etc.

Ideally, a wizard should let the user press "Ok" several times, and
the user should then have something that works.

The name "setup wizard" sucks, though.  "Setup Saint" would be much
better.  "Let Saint Ignucious Guide You."  With a nice iconic
Ignucious.  Or something.

Perhaps not.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   address@hidden * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen