Luamail: a mail client built into luakit

Question

see http://dieter.plaetinck.be/luamail_a_ma … uakit.html

Answer 1

quigybo wrote:
Dieter@be wrote:Also, we do some things like spawning a terminal with vim, when composing a mail.
There was some work on getting XEmbed support in luakit, imho gvim in a separate tab would be nicer than spawning a terminal for composing mail. If it is not ready, then luakit.spawn with a callback handler may be a nicer (non-blocking) way of opening an editor.
Hmm, I don't like gvim, because it adds unneeded stuff (like Gtk menubars and whatnot). maybe we can use an Xembed-capable terminal and run vim in there?
embedding gvim/terminal will look a bit nicer than my spawn-new-terminal-window approach, but I don't think it would necessarily be more useful. an argument would be: if it would spawn vim and blocks luakit, it sortof forces you take care of the mail first (i.e. makes you more productive), *but* you can close vim if you _need_ to look at a webpage again, and later return to the message in the same way (do a luamail keybind to continue where you left off).
you can't see the editor at the same time as a misc other tab in luakit, but neither can you with your suggested approach.  unless you split off the luamail window into a different window (which is a feature we'll implement at some point), then it works with either approach.  but if we block luakit then it won't receive the keybind.
I think you're right, your approach is probably more elegant (if all the issues mentioned in that ticket get resolved), and would allow to do some things properly (like, compose multiple mails at the same time, etc)
it's nice you could do that callback trick.  Thanks for showing me.  I read somewhere in the luadocs that if you spawn in a non-blocking way, it's not possible to get output and exit code, but that seems solved then with this approach.  With this approach it would also allow to compose multiple mails at the same time, but then you should be careful not to close your luakit window if you still have other compose-mail windows open. unless luakit tracks that and warns you.
anyway, your suggested approach of embedding is probably the better way.
edit: interesting, urxvt can be embedded: http://linux.die.net/man/1/urxvt
Btw do you prefer gvim over urxvt+vim ? if so: why?
Last edited by Dieter@be (2011-10-03 14:44:19)