Re: Question about article identification and backends.

[kai.grossjohann@gmx.net (Kai Großjohann)]

Rob Browning <rlb@defaultvalue.org> writes:

> So with respect to ordering the articles in a group, were you thinking
> that gnus would:
>
>   - just keep a separate per-group list ordering the articles in a
>     group.

No.

>   - default to order by "Date:" (or some new "X-Gnus-Arrival-Date:" header).

That would be slower, but possible.

>   - default to order by the unique article ID, presuming that the ID
>     included the arrival date (a la maildir?).

That's what I prefer.  In fact, I was kind of assuming that the
backend just counts articles in a server, just like nnml now counts
articles in a group.

> In particular, if when I enter a large group and gnus asks me how many
> articles, how would that article subset be chosen?  I'd really like
> for it to always be the N most recent articles either by Date: or
> arrival date by default.

That's a thorny issue.  Hm.  But nnml in principle has the same
problem, so maybe a similar solution could be devised?

However, I'm afraid it might boil down to keeping a list of numbers
for each group, which is kinda like the first suggestion that you made
that I rejected.  Hm.  Well, I think the Agent already keeps such
lists, and it works in principle, so the amount of data involved is
not too big.

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