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

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

[Brendan Miller]

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

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

[Eric Abrahamsen]

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

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

[Christopher Schmidt]

Brendan Miller <catphive@catphive.net> writes:

> 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?

This is Gnus default behaviour.  If you give Gnus a numerical prefix N
when entering a group via the group buffer, Gnus will fetch the N newest
articles, even when some of them are marked as read.  You can also tick
articles in the summary buffer via gnus-summary-tick-article-forward (M
!) which marks them to be always visible.  To display a group without
unread articles unconditionally in the group buffer, set the group
parameter 'visible' to t.  Have a look at

(info "(gnus)Selecting a Group")
(info "(gnus)Unread Articles")

for more information.

> 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?

'r' means that the article has been explicitly marked as read whereas
'R' means that the article actually has been read, that is it was
display in an article buffer at some point.

        Christopher

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

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Brendan Miller <catphive@catphive.net>:

> 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?

You can remove the mark again with `M-u', then it shows up as unread,
and also contributes to the unread count.

You can "tick" it with `u'.  Then it disappears from the group's unread
count, but still shows up in the summary buffer, but with a different
colour. 

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

[Adam Sjøgren]

On Tue, 08 Nov 2011 23:00:32 +0800, Eric wrote:

> 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?

[...]

> 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.

Note also how this behavior lends it very well to the whole "Inbox
Zero"-concept; predating it by a couple of decades.

I use ! to "tick" emails that I have to do something about later - that
way when I enter an email-group, I only see emails that new and emails
that I have previously decided I need to do something about.

This, of course, safe in the knowledge that if I need to dig up an email
that I didn't have to do anything about, or already answered, I can.


  Best regards,

     Adam

-- 
 "None of them kicks go boom                                  Adam Sjøgren
  None of them basslines fill the room"                  asjo@koldfront.dk