Bug with referring articles (was: chasing mail threads)

[Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>]

Dave Abrahams <dave@boostpro.com> writes:

Hi Dave,

>> See gnus-refer-article-method.
>
> Okay, I see it.  I do appreciate the hint, but it's practically
> undocumented, and I'm not familiar enough with Gnus internals to have
> any idea how to take advantage of it.  Could you perhaps elaborate a
> bit?

,----[ C-h v gnus-refer-article-method RET ]
| gnus-refer-article-method is a variable defined in `gnus.el'.
| Its value is (current
|  (nnregistry)
|  (nnweb "gmane"
| 	(nnweb-type gmane))
|  (nnweb "google"
| 	(nnweb-type google)))
| 
| Original value was current
`----

So my setting for referring articles means,

  - try to find the message in the current select method,
  - if that doesn't work, query the registry,
  - if that doesn't work, ask gmane via the web,
  - if all fails, try google groups.

The second entry requires the gnus registry, of course.  So you have to
initialize it in your ~/.gnus.el with

  (gnus-registry-initialize)

I'm not completely sure, but I have the gut feeling that `current'
should actually work for IMAP (you are using IMAP, right?).  But that's
the default value, and you say it doesn't work for you...

Ok, so now I've edebugged that stuff, and it seems there is a bug.
First, I moved some parent article from my IMAP ding group to my normal
INBOX.  Mork concretely, I've moved lee's article

  "problems with archive" / <87d3ig2qcf.fsf@yun.yagibdah.de>

from nnimap+Fastmail:INBOX.mailinglists.ding to nnimap+Fastmail:INBOX,
so that lee's

  "Re: problems with archive" / <8739jc13hi.fsf@yun.yagibdah.de>

is left alone in the ding group and hitting `^' on it will trigger
article referring.

In `gnus-summary-refer-article' there's this loop

,----[ ~/repos/el/gnus/lisp/gnus-sum.el ]
| 	(catch 'found
| 	  (dolist (gnus-override-method (gnus-refer-article-methods))
| 	    (when (and (gnus-check-server gnus-override-method)
| 		       ;; Fetch the header,
| 		       (setq number (gnus-summary-insert-subject message-id)))
| 	      ;; and display the article.
| 	      (gnus-summary-select-article nil nil nil number)
| 	      (throw 'found t)))
`----

which should try all article refer methods until one finds the referred
article.  But that doesn't work at all.

The problem is that `gnus-summary-insert-subject' doesn't find the
referred article (1), although its on the same server but a different
IMAP folder.  But instead it inserts a pseudo-article and returns 0,
thus the `when' succeeds and 'found is thrown and no other refer methods
are tried.

IMHO, the pseudo-article should be inserted only after all refer methods
failed...

(1) Is it correct that IMAP has no way to find a message by Message-ID
    in all folders?  In my case, I've just moved the referred article
    from my ding group to the INBOX on the same IMAP server and had
    expected the `current' gnus-refer-article-method to work by
    searching for that Message-ID on the server...

Bye,
Tassilo
-- 
Sent from my Emacs