Re: What's your gnus-demon-scan-news idle time?

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

dick.r.chiang@gmail.com writes:

> I am close to threading gnus-group-get-new-news and am looking for datapoints
> on the following:

I'm very curious to hear how you're handling threading! My observation
has been that you can't (currently) run individual servers in their own
threads, because they all fight over the nntp-server-buffer, and that
threading the entire new-news update process basically still blocks all
of emacs. How are you doing it?

> 1. Do you run gnus in a separate emacs instance?
>
> 2. If you use gnus-demon to refresh messages, what are your TIME and IDLE
> values?  If you don't use gnus-demon, are you manually refreshing via "g" or
> some other method?

I don't do either of these. My IMAP servers are local, so there's very
little lag. My NNTP server connection seems to fail by itself every
eight or nine minutes, so there's exactly no lag there :) Not until I
make an effort to reconnect.

> For this user, I do run gnus separately from my dev work, and my
> TIME is nil and IDLE is 7 minutes.  After threading, I hope to swap those
> settings (TIME 7, IDLE nil).

Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net> writes:

> Aloha,
>
> I run a single instance of emacs, and I refresh gnus only with 'g' on
> a purely manual basis. But that isn't the full story.
>
> I use IMAP exclusively as I run gnus and emacs across something like 8
> devices. Since checking/fetching IMAP is slow and blocking, I only
> want to do that when (a) I know there is something to fetch and (b) I
> want to fetch it.
>
> When emacs starts, I have it launch a bash script that loops and
> periodically checks for new mail in my IMAP boxes (primarily gmail).
> If there is new mail (not just unread mail, but something newly
> arrived since last check) it writes a small drop file and barks (plays
> a sound).
>
> A small function driven off the mode-line checks the drop file. This
> is very fast with no perceptible overhead. The modeline shows the
> number of new emails. (A few other functions deal with updating the
> mode line when I actually read the new mail.)
>
> So when I either hear the bark or notice new mail in the modeline, and
> I feel okay with stopping my work for a bit, I make a manual check. At
> this point I don't mind the blocking operation.
>
> Now, at least for me, NOT checking email often is a good thing. I used
> to check it a lot. Maybe it's a positive feature that IMAP email
> reading with gnus is both blocking and slow, because my
> constant/frequent checking/reading email was an enormous time waster
> and productivity drain.

Now we know what your 1,000 lines of config are doing! That is a nice
solution. Running a local IMAP server does a bit of the same work, in
that you end up having to make a conscious decision to check your mail,
but the automatic (but fairly subtle) notification is a nice touch.

Eric