Enhancing nndiscourse: New Features and Improvements
Introduction
I’ve been working on enhancing the nndiscourse package for Emacs, which provides a Gnus backend for Discourse forums. I wanted to share some of the recent improvements that make it more powerful and user-friendly.
Key Enhancements
1. Username Display Fix
Previously, usernames were showing as “unknown” in posts. I’ve implemented a fix that:
- Properly extracts usernames from Discourse API responses
- Caches usernames to reduce API calls
- Shows the actual username of the person who posted each topic
2. JSON Parsing Performance
To address performance issues with JSON parsing:
- Built a custom Emacs from the
faster-json-parsingbranch - Added JSON timing logging to measure and compare performance
- Significantly reduced parsing time for large forum responses
3. Posting Capabilities
The biggest enhancement is adding posting capabilities to transform nndiscourse from a read-only client into a fully interactive Discourse client:
- Create new topics in any category
- Reply to existing posts with proper threading
- Use Markdown formatting in your posts
- Secure authentication using Discourse credentials or API key
Usage
This topic was created in emacs, but when pressing C-c C-c' it currently opens your browser with the topic details populated. I am working on being able to post directly from emacs, I am, I promise.
Creating a new topic will be as simple as pressing C-c C-n in the Gnus Summary buffer, while replying to a post will be done with C-c C-r in the Article buffer. Keybindings are subject to change.
Future Plans
I’m considering adding support for:
- File attachments
- Further performance optimizations
- Improved error handling
Conclusion
These improvements make nndiscourse a much more complete solution for interacting with Discourse forums directly from Emacs. I hope to have some code available soon(ish)
Happy Emacs-ing!
This is what it looks like in gnus
