From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/52738 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Rob Browning Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Question about article identification and backends. Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 22:19:44 -0500 Sender: ding-owner@lists.math.uh.edu Message-ID: <877k8paqlr.fsf@raven.i.defaultvalue.org> References: <8765o9cpoj.fsf@raven.i.defaultvalue.org> <87vfw9gszz.fsf@eris.void.at> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1053227902 1894 80.91.224.249 (18 May 2003 03:18:22 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 18 May 2003 03:18:22 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: ding-owner+M1282@lists.math.uh.edu Sun May 18 05:18:19 2003 Return-path: Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19HEgk-0000UH-00 for ; Sun, 18 May 2003 05:18:18 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 19HEiG-0006Yr-00; Sat, 17 May 2003 22:19:52 -0500 Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com ([64.157.176.121]) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 19HEiB-0006Ym-00 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Sat, 17 May 2003 22:19:47 -0500 Original-Received: (qmail 34932 invoked by alias); 18 May 2003 03:19:46 -0000 Original-Received: (qmail 34927 invoked from network); 18 May 2003 03:19:46 -0000 Original-Received: from dsl093-098-016.wdc1.dsl.speakeasy.net (HELO defaultvalue.org) (postfix@66.93.98.16) by sclp3.sclp.com with SMTP; 18 May 2003 03:19:46 -0000 Original-Received: from raven.i.defaultvalue.org (raven.i.defaultvalue.org [192.168.1.7]) by defaultvalue.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D74B31AD8 for ; Sat, 17 May 2003 22:19:45 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: by raven.i.defaultvalue.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id D4735215002; Sat, 17 May 2003 22:19:44 -0500 (CDT) Original-To: ding@gnus.org In-Reply-To: <87vfw9gszz.fsf@eris.void.at> (Andreas Fuchs's message of "Sat, 17 May 2003 21:29:43 +0000 (UTC)") User-Agent: Gnus/5.1001 (Gnus v5.10.1) Emacs/21.3 (gnu/linux) Precedence: bulk Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:52738 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:52738 Andreas Fuchs writes: > The only problem I see with this approach is that you don't get a > clean number<->article-id mapping; nnmaildir's solution to this > problem might also apply for integrating the RMS into gnus. I think you may be referring to the main thing I'm wondering about -- how difficult would it be for Gnus to change such that it doesn't require all of the following: A few remarks about these article numbers might be useful. First of all, the numbers are positive integers. Secondly, it is normally not possible for later articles to `re-use' older article numbers without confusing Gnus. That is, if a group has ever contained a message numbered 42, then no other message may get that number, or Gnus will get mightily confused.(1) Third, article numbers must be assigned in order of arrival in the group; this is not necessarily the same as the date of the message. i.e. how reasonable might it be, and how difficult the task to change Gnus to rely on stable unique article ids (global ones -- or at least global within a backend) rather than stable unique per-group integers? And given such a change, could Gnus perhaps then just expect an ordered list of IDs from the backend when it wants the articles in a group, and not mind if this order changes from backend query to backend query? Among other things, I presume this would require Gnus to reorient to key marks by a group-id/unique-id pair rather than the group/position pair it uses now. The sequence position of an article within a group would either have to be stored independently, or perhaps it could even be dropped entirely if people were happy with just having by-date (or maybe by arrival time) sorting -- not a big deal to me either way. Thanks -- Rob Browning rlb @defaultvalue.org and @debian.org; previously @cs.utexas.edu GPG starting 2002-11-03 = 14DD 432F AE39 534D B592 F9A0 25C8 D377 8C7E 73A4