From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/49928 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai =?iso-8859-1?q?Gro=DFjohann?=) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Why article numbers? Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 22:55:05 +0100 Organization: University of Duisburg, Germany Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: <841y2jzrgm.fsf@lucy.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1044654871 19266 80.91.224.249 (7 Feb 2003 21:54:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 21:54:31 +0000 (UTC) Return-path: Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 18hGRg-0004zR-00 for ; Fri, 07 Feb 2003 22:54:04 +0100 Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu ([129.7.128.10] ident=lists) by malifon.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 18hGTJ-0004Ve-00; Fri, 07 Feb 2003 15:55:45 -0600 Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Fri, 07 Feb 2003 15:56:41 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com (sclp3.sclp.com [66.230.238.2]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id PAA23206 for ; Fri, 7 Feb 2003 15:56:30 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: (qmail 63969 invoked by alias); 7 Feb 2003 21:55:29 -0000 Original-Received: (qmail 63964 invoked from network); 7 Feb 2003 21:55:28 -0000 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org (80.91.224.244) by 66.230.238.6 with SMTP; 7 Feb 2003 21:55:28 -0000 Original-Received: from news by quimby.gnus.org with local (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 18hGak-00012p-00 for ; Fri, 07 Feb 2003 23:03:26 +0100 Original-To: ding@gnus.org Original-Path: not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnus.ding Original-Lines: 24 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: pd951f1c2.dip.t-dialin.net Original-X-Trace: quimby.gnus.org 1044655406 3642 217.81.241.194 (7 Feb 2003 22:03:26 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@quimby.gnus.org Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Feb 2003 22:03:26 GMT User-Agent: Gnus/5.090015 (Oort Gnus v0.15) Emacs/21.3.50 Cancel-Lock: sha1:oSDAeyfgkL/dVvYaEN1g08dLJSI= Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:49928 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:49928 Now that I'm thinking about it again, maybe it is possible to migrate all of Gnus away from article numbers as identifiers, towards some opaque data type? That would facilitate some new features (such as offline message moving). One could implement a data type for the article "numbers", then use that data type throughout. Then one could change the implementation of that data type to something incompatible with article numbers to ensure that it is used everywhere. Then various backends could use whatever they liked. It would destroy using ranges. Are ranges important in Gnus? How could bad side effects be avoided on the transition to, say, message ids? Maybe the most difficult part is the "marked as read" thing: how do you use message ids to store the fact that articles 1 through 50,000, say, have been read by the user or disappeared altogether? If you store the first message id that has been read, and then that message is moved to another group or canceled... Whee. Thoughts? -- A turnip curses Elvis