Store meta information with backends?

Store meta information with backends?

[Kai Großjohann]

I think it would be advantageous for some people to be able to store
information with the backends.  (nnmail-derived backends could offer
the option of storing stuff in .newsrc.eld like it is now.)

For IMAP, the benefit is obvious.  It already requires all information
to be in the backend, after all.

But this would be nice for other backends, too.  For example, suppose
I rsync my ~/Mail directory between home and work, but at home I'm
using a different NNTP server, and at home I read my Hotmail mail.

Then I could tell Gnus to store all the meta information from the nnml
backend in some place that's rsynced along with ~/Mail.

We could add some functions to the backend interface, and wherever
Gnus now accesses the ~/.newsrc.eld information, we modify it to go to
the backend functions instead.

I'm not suggesting to entirely replace the current storage format; we
could offer a server parameter which tells the backend functions to
save stuff in ~/.newsrc.eld.

What do you all think?

kai
-- 
I like BOTH kinds of music.

Re: Store meta information with backends?

[Steven E. Harris]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

[...]

> What do you all think?

I'm not sure I understand the solution, but I'm living the problem,
and thus think that anything we work on in this arena would be most
welcome.

-- 
Steven E. Harris        :: sharris   @primus.com
Primus                  :: http://www.primus.com

Re: Store meta information with backends?

[Simon Josefsson]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> I think it would be advantageous for some people to be able to store
> information with the backends.  (nnmail-derived backends could offer
> the option of storing stuff in .newsrc.eld like it is now.)
...
> What do you all think?

I saw a christmas movie commercial yesterday, so I'll make a wish:

A goal for OGnus might be to get rid of .newsrc.eld completely.
.newsrc would be in the standard .newsrc format, for news only, and
everything else (topics, servers etc) might be stored in some other
file, or if the backend think it can do a better job, in the backend.

But yes, it would be nice.  Making annotations (without modifying the
article file) is useful, but storing annotations in .newsrc.eld too
doesn't feel right.

Re: Store meta information with backends?

[Sean Doran]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> But this would be nice for other backends, too.  For
> example, suppose I rsync my ~/Mail directory between
> home and work, but at home I'm using a different NNTP
> server, and at home I read my Hotmail mail.

Alternatively, store your mail in ~/imap/ and use IMAP 
at home and at work to read your mail without necessarily
copying all of it over; if the meta-information is kept in
the IMAP back-end, you don't need to synch anything on
these mailboxes, you just us a "longer connection" to the
IMAP daemon.

Storing metainformation with other backends (e.g. nnml) 
obviously helps in the rsync case, but it should also make
it possible to move a group wholesale from one backend to
another, without losing marks/scores/kills/etc.   For
example, if I have an nnml group locally and I want to
"share" it with myself via IMAP, a Group-level command
should migrate everything from the nnml group to a new
nnimap one, without losing state.

> What do you all think?

Yes, please.

        Sean.