Re: Gnus Summary buffer enhancement?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Dieter Faulbaum <mail@faulbaum.in-berlin.de> writes:

> I think it would be nice if the summary buffer uses the
> tabulated-list-mode?
> Maybe the Group buffer too?
>
> Would the header line and sorting possibility be enhancements for that
> buffer(s)?

Without thinking about it very hard, this seems like a whole lot of work
without obvious benefit. The slow parts of summary buffer generation
include building the thread structure (if threading is used),
determining sort order, and calculating columns widths. All those things
would still have to be done under `tabulated-list-mode', so all we'd get
would be the surrounding "framework" code. That would be nice, but
probably not worth the work.

One significant improvement I'd like to see for the summary buffers is
"in-place" updates: inserting, re-ordering or re-drawing header lines
individually, without refreshing the entire buffer. I don't think
`tabulated-list-mode' would help here, either.

It might work for the group buffer, but probably not for topic mode,
where there are separate header lines, and groups can appear more than
once, under different topics.

It's worth thinking about, though...

Eric