Re: What's the problem?

[Miles Bader]

Simon Josefsson <address@hidden> writes:
> > It depends on your environment of course -- if you have a slow network
> > connection (or a slow server), it can spend a _lot_ of time waiting for
> > external processes/data.
> 
> Right, with emphasis on _can_.

At least for me, this is an issue every single day; the CPU-bound parts
of summary generation &c are slightly annoying, but really not enough to
warrant any massive rewriting -- on the order of 30s or so for a large
newsgroup -- but IO-bound delays can be 10 _minutes_.  I don't know what
it's like for other people.

> > Anyway my main point is that I think it's basically an application
> > issue, though emacs might help by adding helper functions.
> 
> I don't see how fixing my perceived problem can be done without some
> kind of threading support in Emacs (co-operative or whatever).  Hence,
> helper functions would do more than just help, they are critical in
> improving the application.

What I'm trying to say is that the `threading support' need not be
particularly good, or general-purpose.  Probably something could be
hacked up right _now_, without any additional core functions, using
clever programming and emacs timers, by changing the worst-offending
part of the gnus code into something event driven.

-Miles
-- 
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