Re: Being forced to deal with message numbers and frustrated

[Tony Lam <Tony.Lam+ding@eng.sun.com>]

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

* Tony Lam <Tony.Lam+ding@eng.sun.com>  on Wed, 23 Jun 1999

Tony> * Number gap in cached messages can not be removed. When a messages
Tony> group (I use nnfolder) has cached articles, I find
Tony> respooling/moving/copying messages in the group do not touch
Tony> cached articles,

Rat> Why are you caching mail messages?  There is no sane reason to do
Rat> more than 'tick' with `u' so as to prevent articles from being
Rat> expired.

I use passive cache to archive messages in the same group in mail and
news because ticked messages can be expired, at least in newsgroups,
and I want one consistent operation for both mail and groups. Besides,
I use tick to mark messages that need to be replied later.

>From Gnus's info:

`!'
     Marked as ticked (`gnus-ticked-mark').

     "Ticked articles" are articles that will remain visible always.  If
     you see an article that you find interesting, or you want to put
     off reading it, or replying to it, until sometime later, you'd
     typically tick it.  However, articles can be expired, so if you
     want to keep an article forever, you'll have to make it persistent
     (*Note Persistent Articles::).

Maybe the problem can be better stated as article number reseqencing
is not possible for mail groups with cached articles.

Tony> also cache groups do not support moving/copy themselves,

Rat> There is no "cache" backend.  The only ways to read cache areas
Rat> is to use nndir or nneething backends, both of which are
Rat> read-only backends.

Rat> If you wish to reseqence a group, process mark all messages in
Rat> that group and move them to the same group (B m).

You're right, there is no "nncache" backend. My cache groups are using
nnspool backends (Gnus's default?) I was referring the groups that I
setup to read cached only articles. My point was that those groups do
not support copying/moving, so I can't copy or move them to remove
number gaps.

Rat> Virtual groups are frustrating :).

Rat> Gnus reads 100 articles. 

Good to know. Still they are not the last 300 articles that are
arrived most recently from the point of virtual group, as I would get
from a non-virtual group (assuming no article number gap off course).

Rat> I've never experienced these "problems", mainly becuase I never
Rat> bother thinking about things like article numbers.  They are
Rat> irrelevant to me; they only mean something to the Gnus backend
Rat> that maintains them.  Ignore messages numbers and your "problems"
Rat> will go away.

I never want to care about article numbers in the first place. Gnus
could have transparently hide those numbers from user completely, or
at least provide some satisfactory working solution that can be
automated to deal with these situations, and there would be no
problems from user regarding article numbers.

Regards,

Tony