I want to expire some even if unread

I want to expire some even if unread

[David Rogers]

Hello all

I'm looking for a way, just on certain groups, to expire messages 
based ONLY on the fact that they're old, regardless of whether 
they're read or not. I won't remember to activate a special switch 
every x weeks or whatever, so I'm looking for something I can "set 
and forget". Perhaps this type of setup is considered too likely 
to cause unexpected data loss, but if I lose these particular 
groups by accident it won't really matter.

Automatic catch-up to a certain point, maybe? I'm having a hard 
time finding information on this.

It would be a nice bonus if ticked messages were kept, but I'd 
rather lose a few ticked messages than have no automatic expiry.

-- 
Thanks
David Rogers

Re: I want to expire some even if unread

[Gijs Hillenius]

On 12 June 2020 17:36 David Rogers, wrote:

> Hello all
>
> I'm looking for a way, just on certain groups, to expire messages
> based ONLY on the fact that they're old, regardless of whether 
> they're read or not. I won't remember to activate a special switch
> every x weeks or whatever, so I'm looking for something I can "set 
> and forget". Perhaps this type of setup is considered too likely to
> cause unexpected data loss, but if I lose these particular groups by
> accident it won't really matter.
>
> Automatic catch-up to a certain point, maybe? I'm having a hard time
> finding information on this.
>
> It would be a nice bonus if ticked messages were kept, but I'd rather
> lose a few ticked messages than have no automatic expiry.

have you tried

gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups

?

Re: I want to expire some even if unread

[davidandrewrogers]

Gijs Hillenius <gijs@hillenius.net> writes:

> On 12 June 2020 17:36 David Rogers, wrote:
>
>> Hello all
>>
>> I'm looking for a way, just on certain groups, to expire 
>> messages
>> based ONLY on the fact that they're old, regardless of whether 
>> they're read or not. I won't remember to activate a special 
>> switch
>> every x weeks or whatever, so I'm looking for something I can 
>> "set 
>> and forget". Perhaps this type of setup is considered too 
>> likely to
>> cause unexpected data loss, but if I lose these particular 
>> groups by
>> accident it won't really matter.
>>
>> Automatic catch-up to a certain point, maybe? I'm having a hard 
>> time
>> finding information on this.
>>
>> It would be a nice bonus if ticked messages were kept, but I'd 
>> rather
>> lose a few ticked messages than have no automatic expiry.
>
> have you tried
>
> gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups
>
> ?

The manual states more than once that 
gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups only expires messages that have 
been read; my question is about expiring *all* messages, even the 
unread ones, when they get old. If gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups 
can be made to expire both read and unread together, then that's 
great. (but please tell me how)

--
Thanks
David Rogers

Re: I want to expire some even if unread

[Gijs Hillenius]

>
> The manual states more than once that gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups
> only expires messages that have been read; my question is about
> expiring *all* messages, even the unread ones, when they get old. If
> gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups can be made to expire both read and
> unread together, then that's great. (but please tell me how)


I have a bunch of mailinglist that are marked expirable this way. I have
to gnus-topic-catchup-articles ('c' the group in the eponymous buffer),
but I don't have to enter the group itself. And when I do enter the
group, all messages are marked as expirable.

Re: I want to expire some even if unread

[Eric S Fraga]

On Saturday, 13 Jun 2020 at 02:35, davidandrewrogers@gmail.com wrote:
> The manual states more than once that gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups
> only expires messages that have been read; my question is about
> expiring *all* messages, even the unread ones, when they get old. If
> gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups can be made to expire both read and
> unread together, then that's great. (but please tell me how)

I use "M H" and "M h" (selective catch-up, sorting the group by date,
say) all the time to catch up many articles without reading them.  My
understanding is that these are then marked as having been read and,
with the setting that others have noted, will then participate in the
expiry process.

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 28.0.50 & org 9.3.7 on Debian bullseye/sid

Re: I want to expire some even if unread

[David Rogers]

Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> writes:

> On Saturday, 13 Jun 2020 at 02:35, davidandrewrogers@gmail.com 
> wrote:
>> The manual states more than once that 
>> gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups
>> only expires messages that have been read; my question is about
>> expiring *all* messages, even the unread ones, when they get 
>> old. If
>> gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups can be made to expire both read 
>> and
>> unread together, then that's great. (but please tell me how)
>
> I use "M H" and "M h" (selective catch-up, sorting the group by 
> date,
> say) all the time to catch up many articles without reading 
> them.  My
> understanding is that these are then marked as having been read 
> and,
> with the setting that others have noted, will then participate 
> in the
> expiry process.

That makes sense. And the responses so far are tending to indicate 
to me that the answer to my question is essentially "No, Gnus 
won't do what you're asking about, try something different". Does 
that seem accurate? (since my question was specifically about 
deleting old unread messages automatically, with zero need for 
intervention)

-- 
David Rogers

Re: I want to expire some even if unread

[Eric Abrahamsen]

David Rogers <davidandrewrogers@gmail.com> writes:

> Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> writes:
>
>> On Saturday, 13 Jun 2020 at 02:35, davidandrewrogers@gmail.com
>> wrote:
>>> The manual states more than once that
>>> gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups
>>> only expires messages that have been read; my question is about
>>> expiring *all* messages, even the unread ones, when they get old.
>>> If
>>> gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups can be made to expire both read and
>>> unread together, then that's great. (but please tell me how)
>>
>> I use "M H" and "M h" (selective catch-up, sorting the group by
>> date,
>> say) all the time to catch up many articles without reading them.
>> My
>> understanding is that these are then marked as having been read and,
>> with the setting that others have noted, will then participate in
>> the
>> expiry process.
>
> That makes sense. And the responses so far are tending to indicate to
> me that the answer to my question is essentially "No, Gnus won't do
> what you're asking about, try something different". Does that seem
> accurate? (since my question was specifically about deleting old
> unread messages automatically, with zero need for intervention)

Yes, in general Gnus tries very hard not to touch your unread messages.
There's `gnus-auto-expirable-marks', but of course you can't select for
_absence_ of a mark. As indicated by the other responses, your best bet
is probably just to make it more convenient/speedy to mark messages as
read.

Eric

Re: I want to expire some even if unread

[Andrew Cohen]

I don't use scoring but I think it can do what you want. In particular,
there is a setting that allows you to mark any article with a score
lower than something as automatically read. Then expiring as normal will
work without your intervention. You just need to turn scoring on for the
relevant group and give all articles a sufficiently low score.

As I say I haven't done it myself, but I think there is info in the
manual to explain how to do this.

Re: I want to expire some even if unread

[David Rogers]

Gijs Hillenius <gijs@hillenius.net> writes:

> On 13 June 2020 13:28 David Rogers, wrote:
>
>> Gijs Hillenius <gijs@hillenius.net> writes:
>>
>>>> The manual states more than once that
>>>> gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups
>>>
>>> Hm OK. But /mine/ says:
>>>
>>> Groups in which to automatically mark read articles as 
>>> expirable.
>>
>> Exactly, that's what I said - I'm trying to automatically mark 
>> UNread
>> articles as expirable (when they get old).
>
> doh! yes, oops you're right. It works because of the combination 
> with
> gnus-topic-catchup-articles; which effectively marks all 
> articles as
> read.

I've wondered about modifying a hook so that it will, just for my 
chosen groups, automatically catch up to "x" days ago each time I 
exit that group. Does that sound like a reasonable thing to try? 
Or a dumb idea?

-- 
Thanks
David

Re: I want to expire some even if unread

[David Rogers]

Gijs Hillenius <gijs@hillenius.net> writes:

> On 13 June 2020 13:28 David Rogers, wrote:
>
>> Gijs Hillenius <gijs@hillenius.net> writes:
>>
>>>> The manual states more than once that
>>>> gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups
>>>
>>> Hm OK. But /mine/ says:
>>>
>>> Groups in which to automatically mark read articles as 
>>> expirable.
>>
>> Exactly, that's what I said - I'm trying to automatically mark 
>> UNread
>> articles as expirable (when they get old).
>
> doh! yes, oops you're right. It works because of the combination 
> with
> gnus-topic-catchup-articles; which effectively marks all 
> articles as
> read.

I've wondered about modifying a hook so that it will, just for my 
chosen groups, automatically catch up to "x" days ago each time I 
exit that group. Does that sound like a reasonable thing to try? 
Or a dumb idea?

-- 
Thanks
David