Re: gnus newbie question: why do read articles disappear from summary?

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

On Tue, Nov 08 2011, Brendan Miller wrote:

> After reading an article in summary it gets marked with 'R'. If I leave
> the summary buffer for my group with q and log back in, that article
> disappears. Why is this? Also, is there a way to prevent this behavior?
>
> Also, I've noticed there is a way to mark an article read using d, but
> it makes it with a lower case 'r' flag. What's the difference between
> this lower case 'r' flag and the upper case 'R' flag?
> Thanks,
> Brendan Miller

That behavior is part of gnus' original identity as a newsreader: you
only really want to see the news that's new, and if you want old news to
hang around, you've got to do something special to make that happen.

Gnus has made some concessions to being used as an email reader, though,
and you can get something of the traditional "inbox" look though group
parameters. When you're on the group name in the Gnus buffer, hit 'G p'
to edit the parameters. There are a lot of possibilities, but the one
you want is "display". Put the following in the parameters buffer:

((display . 200))

And hit 'C-c C-c' to save the changes. That will make the most recent
200 messages in the group always visible. To see even older ones, either
enter the group with 'C-u SPC' and specify a number, or once you're in
the group you can hit '/ o' ('o' for 'old') and tell it how many old
messages to add to the buffer.

I've never really understood the flags: I think 'R' means "really read"
and 'r' means "I'm pretending I've read this". Practically, I've never
seen a difference. Every time I leave a group and re-enter, all the
marks are changed to 'O' anyway, whatever that means. 'A' for 'answered'
is the only mark I've ever found informative…

Eric

-- 
GNU Emacs 24.0.91.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.24.6)
 of 2011-11-07 on pelletnNo Gnus v0.18