Primary select method switch

Primary select method switch

[Didier Verna]

  Hello,

for several decades, I had an nntp select method as the primary one. Now
the server is dead and I wanted to make my gmail account the main one.
So I (naively) set gnus-select-method to the nnimap server, removed it
from gnus-secondary-select-methods, and restarted Gnus.

Now I have all my gmail groups duplicated. The old ones (named
nnimap+gmail:***) with all their marks are still here, but for each one,
I now also have a *** (no prefix) one, without any marks.

Is there a way to recover from this mess ?

Thank you !

-- 
Resistance is futile. You will be jazzimilated.

Jazz site:   http://www.didierverna.com
Other sites: http://www.didierverna.info

Re: Primary select method switch

[Adam Sjøgren]

Didier writes:

> Now I have all my gmail groups duplicated. The old ones (named
> nnimap+gmail:***) with all their marks are still here, but for each one,
> I now also have a *** (no prefix) one, without any marks.
>
> Is there a way to recover from this mess ?

I'm not sure, what I would try is setting:

  (setq gnus-select-method '(nnnil))

and then keeping it that way, so every method is secondary and
prefixed, and no method is special (primary).

That's what I have been doing for decades :-)


  Best regards,

    Adam

-- 
 "However, it sometimes fails for the unknown reason        Adam Sjøgren
  so far."                                             asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: Primary select method switch

[Andrew Cohen]

>>>>> "dvl" == Didier Verna <didier@didierverna.net> writes:

    dvl>   Hello, for several decades, I had an nntp select method as
    dvl> the primary one. Now the server is dead and I wanted to make my
    dvl> gmail account the main one.  So I (naively) set
    dvl> gnus-select-method to the nnimap server, removed it from
    dvl> gnus-secondary-select-methods, and restarted Gnus.

    dvl> Now I have all my gmail groups duplicated. The old ones (named
    dvl> nnimap+gmail:***) with all their marks are still here, but for
    dvl> each one, I now also have a *** (no prefix) one, without any
    dvl> marks.

    dvl> Is there a way to recover from this mess ?

Depends a bit on what you want.  One big difference between primary and
secondary is the prefixing (as you  discovered). Mostly there isn't much
reason to have a primary select method. A common configuration is to
eliminate the primary, and then put everything in secondary. To
eliminate the primary just set it to 'nnil:

     (setq gnus-select-method '(nnnil ""))


You should be able to do this (and put your gmail groups back in
secondary) and remove the unwanted unprefixed (i.e. primary) groups.


-- 
Andrew Cohen

Re: Primary select method switch

[dick]

dvl> Now I have all my gmail groups duplicated. The old ones (named

Yeah, "total fails" like this are commonplace.  It's what happens when
your mail reader is the culmination of thirty years of cruft.  The
"wut?" of adding a secondary "select methods" variable instead of
vectorizing the first is what you did as a 22-yo in the 1990s.  To this
day I've only a vague idea of what a "select method" is, and I probably
spent more time rewriting gnus than anyone here.

Gnus's persistence model is and was 1990s flat files.  We didn't think
too hard at that time.  If something went wrong, we just went into our
.newsrc.eld, intuited its layout, deleted the offending entries, and
restarted.  I'd advise the same in 2023.

Re: Primary select method switch

[Didier Verna]

Andrew Cohen <acohen@ust.hk> wrote:

>      (setq gnus-select-method '(nnnil ""))

  I've restored everything back to a previous state and did that. Much
  simpler, thanks.

-- 
Resistance is futile. You will be jazzimilated.

Jazz site:   http://www.didierverna.com
Other sites: http://www.didierverna.info

Re: Primary select method switch

[Arash Esbati]

Andrew Cohen <acohen@ust.hk> writes:

> Depends a bit on what you want.  One big difference between primary and
> secondary is the prefixing (as you  discovered). Mostly there isn't much
> reason to have a primary select method. A common configuration is to
> eliminate the primary, and then put everything in secondary. To
> eliminate the primary just set it to 'nnil:
>
>      (setq gnus-select-method '(nnnil ""))

Sorry if I'm missing the obvious, but is it possible to adjust the
prefix shown in the Group buffer with this setup?  Say, I want to have
my local nntp server in secondary, but don't want to see the
'nntp+localhost' prefix all over the place?

Best, Arash

Re: Primary select method switch

[Adam Sjøgren]

Arash writes:

> Andrew Cohen <acohen@ust.hk> writes:

>>      (setq gnus-select-method '(nnnil ""))

> Sorry if I'm missing the obvious, but is it possible to adjust the
> prefix shown in the Group buffer with this setup?  Say, I want to have
> my local nntp server in secondary, but don't want to see the
> 'nntp+localhost' prefix all over the place?

Yes, the server name is used as the prefix - for example I have these:

,----[ C-h v gnus-secondary-select-methods RET ]
|
| Value:
| ((nnml "" (gnus-search-engine gnus-search-notmuch))
|  (nntp "gm" (nntp-address "news.gmane.io"))
|  (nntp "fb" (nntp-open-connection-function nntp-open-tls-stream)
|        (nntp-port-number 563) (nntp-address "feedbase.org"))
|    ...
`----

which gives me names in the *Group* buffer like this:

  nnml:normal
  nntp+gm:gmane.emacs.gnus.general
  nntp+fb:feedbase.news.songkick.copenhagen

(The nntp-address defaults to the server name, so when shortening it I
had to explicitly set nntp-address.)

And this archive method:

,----[ C-h v gnus-message-archive-method RET ]

| (nnml "archive" (nnml-directory "~/Mail/archive")
|       (nnml-active-file "~/Mail/archive/active")
|       (nnml-get-new-mail nil) (gnus-search-engine gnus-search-notmuch)
|       (nnml-inhibit-expiry t))
|
`----

so I have archive groups like:

  nnml+archive:mail-2023
  nnml+archive:news-2023


  Best regards,

    Adam

-- 
 "Girl, you thought he was a man                            Adam Sjøgren
  But he was a muffin"                                 asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: Primary select method switch

[Eric S Fraga]

On Saturday, 30 Sep 2023 at 13:59, Arash Esbati wrote:
> Sorry if I'm missing the obvious, but is it possible to adjust the
> prefix shown in the Group buffer with this setup?  Say, I want to have
> my local nntp server in secondary, but don't want to see the
> 'nntp+localhost' prefix all over the place?

Adam has given you one answer.

An alternative is to change/customise how each individual group is
displayed in the Group buffer by setting the "comment" attribute.  Check
out "G c" and look for the comment entry.  I've renamed almost all of my
groups.

-- 
Eric S Fraga via gnus (Emacs 30.0.50 2023-06-19) on Debian 12.0

Re: Primary select method switch

[Adam Sjøgren]

Eric writes:

> An alternative is to change/customise how each individual group is
> displayed in the Group buffer by setting the "comment" attribute.  Check
> out "G c" and look for the comment entry.  I've renamed almost all of my
> groups.

Ah, cool, I didn't know you could do that!

Even after 20+ years there are still things to learn.


  :-),

   Adam

-- 
 "It's my chainsaw                                          Adam Sjøgren
  Division is mine"                                    asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: Primary select method switch

[Eric S Fraga]

On Thursday,  5 Oct 2023 at 10:41, Adam Sjøgren wrote:
> Even after 20+ years there are still things to learn.

Yeah, me too, both in gnus and Emacs more generally.  Keeps the level of
interest high!

-- 
Eric S Fraga via gnus (Emacs 30.0.50 2023-07-11) on Debian bullseye/sid

Re: Primary select method switch

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Adam Sjøgren <asjo@koldfront.dk>:

> Even after 20+ years there are still things to learn.

+1

Re: Primary select method switch

[Adam Sjøgren]

Eric writes:

> An alternative is to change/customise how each individual group is
> displayed in the Group buffer by setting the "comment" attribute.

Did you also change gnus-group-line-format or similar for this to work?


  Best regards,

    Adam

-- 
 "I used to feel Emacs' way strange. Maybe updating         Adam Sjøgren
  the copyright years of Walt Disney's works every     asjo@koldfront.dk
  year is nonsense. But Emacs' way is alike to it."

Re: Primary select method switch

[Eric S Fraga]

On Thursday,  5 Oct 2023 at 10:51, Adam Sjøgren wrote:
> Eric writes:
>
>> An alternative is to change/customise how each individual group is
>> displayed in the Group buffer by setting the "comment" attribute.
>
> Did you also change gnus-group-line-format or similar for this to work?

Ah, good point.  I have so many settings for gnus, and so many that were
actually incorporated possibly decades ago, that I forget.  Yes, I have

(setq gnus-group-line-format "%m%B%S%p%5y %(%-20C%) %3{%42G [%1L]%}\n")

I guess the important entry is %C which is the "Group comment (string)"
according to the description of gnus-group-line-format.  And, note, I
have the full group name also displayed to the far right.

Thank you,
eric

-- 
Eric S Fraga via gnus (Emacs 30.0.50 2023-07-11) on Debian bullseye/sid

Re: Primary select method switch

[Gijs Hillenius]

On  5 October 2023 10:01 Eric S Fraga, wrote:

> On Thursday,  5 Oct 2023 at 10:51, Adam Sjøgren wrote:
>> Eric writes:
>>
>>> An alternative is to change/customise how each individual group is
>>> displayed in the Group buffer by setting the "comment" attribute.
>>
>> Did you also change gnus-group-line-format or similar for this to work?
>
> Ah, good point.  I have so many settings for gnus, and so many that were
> actually incorporated possibly decades ago, that I forget.  Yes, I have
>
> (setq gnus-group-line-format "%m%B%S%p%5y %(%-20C%) %3{%42G [%1L]%}\n")
>
> I guess the important entry is %C which is the "Group comment (string)"
> according to the description of gnus-group-line-format.  And, note, I
> have the full group name also displayed to the far right.


Could you share an example of what that looks like?



My Group buffer has tens of  "nnimap+servername:INBOX.folder"  and
"nntp+news.gmane.io", "nntp+news.gmane.io"






-- 
The farther you go, the less you know.
		-- Lao Tsu, "Tao Te Ching"

Re: Primary select method switch

[Eric S Fraga]

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On Thursday,  5 Oct 2023 at 11:33, Gijs Hillenius wrote:
> Could you share an example of what that looks like?

not sure if image attachments work but here goes...

-- 
Eric S Fraga via gnus (Emacs 30.0.50 2023-07-11) on Debian bullseye/sid

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Re: Primary select method switch

[Andrew Cohen]

Just an FYI you might try simply replacing the %g spec in
'gnus-group-line-format with %G. This should display the group name
without the unwanted prefix.

-- 
Andrew Cohen