Agent things

Agent things

[Bruce Stephens]

First of all, the agent idea is a great addition to gnus.  I've just
removed leafnode from my machine, and my fears that I might have to
learn INN are abated.

There seem to be things missing though (unsurprisingly).  As has been
pointed out, gnus-agent-expire really ought to be called automatically
somewhere, and it certainly ought to be documented; the only current
mentions of expiry are for mail.

I'm a bit unclear about the usage.  I was expecting for it to start
off unplugged, but it seems to start plugged.  This is sometimes
inconvenient (if I get it to slurp up some news, read some, and decide
to switch off for a while, it would be nice to finish off reading
already obtained news before reconnecting).  Is there some easy way to
get gnus to start unplugged?

Is there some way to persuade the agent to use existing scoring files
(especially the ADAPT files) in addition to its own?  It seems a bit
of an imposition to require me to set up new rules to decide what to
download, when gnus already has a pretty good idea of what I'm going
to want to read.  I ought to be able to add extra bits, like
preventing very large articles in some newsgroups, and it certainly
ought to err on the side of downloading articles, since many articles
I read are ones which gnus isn't all that confident I'll want to read.

-- 
Bruce Stephens	B.Stephens@isode.com
Isode Ltd.	<URL:http://www.isode.com/>

Re: Agent things

[St. Suika Roberts]

What I am wondering about is what happens if one sets the agent-dir var
to the same thing as the cache dir . . .

I would like keep things as simple as possible, and just use the async
stuffs to download articles into the cache.  That would allow one to read
articles while others are downloading, and mark the ones that are
downloaded.

Thanks,
	Suika
--
                        wroberts@tvi.cc.nm.us
``Literature is the lie that tells the truth...''
						--Dorothy Allison

Re: Agent things

[Bruce Stephens]

Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net> writes:

> >>>>> "BS" == Bruce Stephens <b.stephens@isode.com> writes:
> 
> BS> I'm a bit unclear about the usage.  I was expecting for it to start
> BS> off unplugged, but it seems to start plugged.
> 
> You can start Gnus with 'gnus-unplugged' or ((setq gnus-plugged nil)
> gnus).  Either will start Gnus with the agent unplugged.

Duh.  That sounds like it might work!

> Something that just occoured to me: would it be a good thing if, when
> starting Gnus and the remote server is unavailable, to automatically switch
> to unplugged if the server is in the agent?

Yes, I think that would be a good idea.  If my .gnus.el contains
(gnus-agentize), then it's reasonable to assume that I'll want to
continue unplugged if servers can't be contacted.  This'll be wrong
sometimes, of course, but I can cope with pressing "qy" when I don't
want to continue.

Re: Agent things

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Bruce Stephens <b.stephens@isode.com> writes:

> As has been pointed out, gnus-agent-expire really ought to be called
> automatically somewhere, and it certainly ought to be documented;
> the only current mentions of expiry are for mail.

Yeah.  `gnus-agent-expire' doesn't really work properly, which is why
it isn't documented.  I need to have it work from the history file
instead of what it's doing now.

> Is there some way to persuade the agent to use existing scoring files
> (especially the ADAPT files) in addition to its own?  It seems a bit
> of an imposition to require me to set up new rules to decide what to
> download, when gnus already has a pretty good idea of what I'm going
> to want to read.

Yes...  but there are some elements (like "thread" and "body") that
can't be used in Agent score files.  Hm.  Perhaps the scoring code
could just ignore those elements while downloading.

There needs to be a way to control whether Gnus should use the normal
scoring files or the Agent score files when deciding what to download,
though.  

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: Agent things

[Bruce Stephens]

larsi@gnus.org said:
> Yes...  but there are some elements (like "thread" and "body") that 
> can't be used in Agent score files.  Hm.  Perhaps the scoring code 
> could just ignore those elements while downloading.

That would probably do.

> There needs to be a way to control whether Gnus should use the normal 
> scoring files or the Agent score files when deciding what to 
> download, though.   

"Or"??  I want it to use both, and the normal scoring files should have a 
lower priority than the agent score files.  There are many newsgroups that I 
mostly just scan, reading the occasional article (heck, that's all of them, I 
think).  I'd like to be able to tell the agent to get all short articles (or 
maybe all short, not too crossposted articles), whilst at the same time using 
the normal score files so if there's a longer article by an author I like, 
it'll get that.

Hmm.  Maybe that could all be rolled into the normal scoring rules.  I think 
the way you've got it at the moment makes sense, though: deciding what 
articles to get is logically different (although closely related) to deciding 
what articles I'm likely to want to read.