Re: Change default behavior of gnus-summary-pipe-output?

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> writes:

> On Tuesday, 17 Oct 2023 at 09:59, Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
>> 1. What do you think about changing the default behavior of the output
>> to pipe command to use the raw article?
>
> I would have no problem with changing the default.  I seldom use the
> pipe command so I might not be the most appropriate person to vote on
> this, mind you.

All data is good data!

>> 2. How many of you are aware of Gnus' symbolic prefixes, and make use of
>> them?
>
> Not aware at all (and I'm not sure I understand the documentation on the
> M-i key binding).

I think the issue was that, for many Gnus commands, the numerical prefix
is used up selecting a number of groups/articles from point. That means
there's no good mechanism for doing what the prefix argument usually is
for, which is "make this command behave a little differently". So the
"symbolic prefix" is for that: in addition to putting in a numerical
prefix, you can put in a symbolic prefix (one character) which can then
make the command behave differently.

I think in the rest of the Emacs world, packages with complex command
invocation are resolving them with things like transient or hydra. But
Gnus has always had its own thing (usually a decade before anyone else)!

Eric