Re: Confused about crosspost marking behavior.

[Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu>]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Yes, that's a strange behavior of Gnus.  If you were to change from
> auto-expire to total-expire, the behavior would be more dwim-like:
> both messages would have been marked as read, which would have made
> them expirable.

Right.  If you're not using total-expire, this behavior means that
you're going to slowly accumulate a set of read articles that should
have been deleted in the crossposted groups.  This makes the "&"
split-fancy operatory less useful.

I'm really beginning to suspect that Gnus just really wants me to use
total-expire and get used to it.  Using the other approaches, although
nice in that I get an "extra mark", seems to keep causing me problems
when the default behavior doesn't do what I want because it's really
geared toward total-expiry.

> There is a problem, though: what should happen if the article is
> cross-posted to several groups, and some of them are auto-expirable
> and some of them aren't?

Right.  I just keep getting this feeling that the whole total/auto
expire process isn't quite right.  It seems awkward and confusing to
me.  I wonder if, with a few changes, we couldn't make it clearer.
How about this? (caveat: I don't know enough to know if it would be
way too complex to implement):

  1) Make the expire mark orthogonal to the other marks.  In other
     words, an article can be both read and expired (this eliminates
     the problems with auto-expire and adaptive-scoring since gnus
     wouldn't lose the read-ness info it needs).

  2) In total-expire and auto-expire groups, make the normal movement
     commands (the ones that would mark articles as read, killed,
     etc.) mark articles as both read (or whatever) *and* expired.
     Now total-expire and auto-expire are the same thing (and both are
     fast).  As a bonus, that means that we don't have to keep trying
     to explain which one people should use.

  3) In other groups, the normal movement commands would just mark
     articles as read, killed, or whatever.  The user can still
     add/remove the expired mark manually using 'E' (though there
     should also be a command to remove *just* the expired mark).

  4) Only articles with an expire marke will ever be expired after the
     expiry-wait period.

  5) Arrange it so that if you mark a crossposted article, then it
     gets the "equivalent mark" everywhere.  Equivalent means that in
     cases where you mark the article as read (including killed,
     etc.), then it also gets an expire mark in any total/auto-expire
     groups, but not in "normal" groups.  However, if you mark an
     article as expired, then it gets the expire mark everywhere.

  6) Add a variable nnmail-crosspost-mark-query that, if true, asks
     the user what to do when gnus is about to mark a crossposted
     article (or articles):

       Marking crossposted article as read.  Apply to all groups? [Y/n]
       Unmarking crossposted article.  Apply to all groups? [Y/n]
       Expiring crossposted article.  Apply to all groups? [Y/n]
       etc.

     If it turned out to be useful, there could also be "force"
     versions of the commands that don't ask, even if asking is "on".

Is this actually an improvement?  It seems clearer to me, but how
about to others?

-- 
Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930