Re: `gnus-refer-article-methods' and `gnus-summary-refer-thread'

[Andrew Cohen <cohen@andy.bu.edu>]

>>>>> "Dave" == Dave Abrahams <dave@boostpro.com> writes:

    Dave> It's a bit curious that when I'm sitting on the root of a
    Dave> thread, `A T' doesn't find the rest of it via nnir when I have
    Dave> that in `gnus-refer-article-methods'.  

`A T' (gnus-summary-refer-thread) doesn't use gnus-refer-article-methods
at all. This is distinct from `^` (gnus-summary-refer-parent-article)
which consults the entries in `gnus-refer-article-methods' in order
until the parent is found.

For nnimap groups `A T' searches /in the current group/ for any article
that is referenced in the primary article, or refers to the primary
article or any of its references. In rare cases where mailers have not
properly coordinated references it is possible for this to miss
articles, but it should be rare and avoiding it would require recursing
searches which would be very slow.

What it does /not/ do is search across multiple groups, and this is the
most likely reason for not finding all articles within a thread.  The
current function adds the found articles from the current group into the
summary buffer. Nnir creates an ephemeral group which can contain
articles from multiple groups which is substantively different.  Having
said that I am just about to check in a modification that will allow
searching across multiple groups through the use of a prefix-arg or
setting a variable. Rather than calling the current
`gnus-summary-refer-thread' this will construct the same imap search
pattern but use nnir to search across the entire server and create an
ephemeral group with the results.

HTH,
Andy