Re: gnus-secondary-select-methods: what's the point?

[David Engster <deng@randomsample.de>]

David Abrahams <dave@boostpro.com> writes:
> I'm trying to figure out what the point is of setting up
> gnus-secondary-select-methods.  I can go into my *Servers* buffer and
> add servers that will persist across sessions without ever changing it.
> So what does it really do?

There isn't much difference between secondary and foreign groups. My
guess would be that native, secondary and foreign groups more or less
evolved historically, but I might be wrong.

Regarding gnus-secondary-select-methods, you probably already found the
following remark in the docs:

,----
|    A slightly different approach to foreign groups is to set the
| `gnus-secondary-select-methods' variable.  The select methods listed in
| this variable are in many ways just as native as the
| `gnus-select-method' server.  They will also be queried for active
| files during startup (if that's required), and new newsgroups that
| appear on these servers will be subscribed (or not) just as native
| groups are.
`----

In a nutshell, I see the following differences:

* native method: doesn't have a prefix and will be ignored if you start
  through gnus-no-server (only for groups with level >2).

* secondary methods: do have a prefix, will not be ignored by
  gnus-no-server (?).

* foreign methods: won't be queried for new groups on startup. Server
  vanishes if you unsubscribe from all its groups.

Otherwise, it's more or less a matter of taste. Some people like to have
their full configuration in .gnus, and not in .newsrc.eld, since the
latter isn't meant to be edited by hand.

-David