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
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
?
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
>
> 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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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