Re: existing work on TODO items

[Dave Love]

Ken Manheimer <address@hidden> writes:

> perhaps you're referring to my initial allout topic encryption
> changes, which used facilities from crypt++ and mailcrypt?

Yes, sorry.

> someone suggested using pgg instead, and started some changes there
> (to implement symmetric-key encryption) which would enable me to do
> so.  i refined their pgg changes, added some general pgg fixes, and
> switched over allout's new encryption to use the modified pgg.  it's
> all checked in to the gnu repository, and comes with the head emacs
> 22 checkout.

I found some time to try, and it does run now, but I still can't see
how it works (or, really, why).  I managed to get a section encrypted,
but it failed to decrypt, even when it didn't request a passphrase
(cached from the original entry?), so I lost data.  Also setting
`allout-passphrase-verifier-handling' didn't seem to allow me to use
my private key.  There's no coding conversion done, so this can lose
with non-ASCII, potentially also causing data loss, though I don't
know what's actually done.

> as far as i can see, outline.el provides only for navigating
> outlines.

I don't understand what you mean, and I doubt others will.  Outline at
least does revealing of hidden items and subtree movement in some
sense, though I don't know how they actually compare with allout and
the manual doesn't document everything.  Exactly what behaviour do you
mean?  Major modes should support Outline minor mode where reasonable,
and a number do.

> the reverse is not the case - outline.el cannot handle most common
> formatted outlines, much less custom ones,

I don't know what that means but, for instance, my Python mode
supports block-wise outlining with outline-minor-mode and Allout
doesn't appear to support the outline variables that major modes set.

> outline.el lacks some of allout's navigation features (eg, hotspot
> navigation),

If I understand correctly, outline.el could easily do that, but I'm
not convinced I'd want to be prevented from typing a letter into a
Python block heading.  (outline.el should have had mouse-based tree
manipulation like XEmacs', but as far as I remember it requires
redisplay changes as for mouse-sensitive marginal icons, which I lost
interest in pursuing.)

There's clearly at least a documentation problem here if I'm confused
even after a glance at the code and can't tell what it does for me.
Of course allout isn't unique in that, and I don't mean to criticize
it particularly.  It definitely should address the potential data
loss, though.