Re: (provide 'nnmaildir)

[Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org>]

Paul Jarc <prj@po.cwru.edu> writes:

> I've been developing on emacs 20.3 and Gnus 5.6.45.  (Has the
> backend interface changed since then?)

No.

> So... what conditions are article numbers supposed to satisfy?

They must be a positive elisp integer, and article numbers should be
persistant between gnus sessions.

If you can make them small and contiguous, do so.  Gnus keeps
(un)compressing ranges and sorting them and stuff, and that is _slow_
even when the highest article number is a few hundred thousand.

> What do NNTP servers do when they run out (I'm assuming they don't
> use bignums), and how does Gnus react?

Gnus just barf at article numbers > 2^28.

> The server argument to the backend functions is the second element of
> the select method, right?  A string, typically?  And as the author of
> the backend, I decide what it means?  (Right now, I'm using it to
> specify the path to the maildir, but I think I'll create a backend
> variable for that purpose instead.)

Yes.  A good idea for the variable name would be `nnmaildir-directory'
to match nnml etc.

> I'm unclear about the usage of nnoo-change-server and
> nnoo-push-server.  I've just been working from (un/sparsely commented)
> examples in the various nn*.el to guess where to use each.  If I
> define a backend variable like (defvoo nnmaildir-maildir "~/Maildir/")
> and use a select method like
> '(nnmaildir "blah" (nnmaildir-maildir "/path/to/maildir")) then my
> understanding is that nnoo-change-server will, among other things, pick
> up the value of nnmaildir-maildir from the defs argument, and that
> value will be visible to nnmaildir-open-server (i.e., the caller of
> nnoo-open-server).  Is this right?

I think so.

>  What about nnoo-push-server?

I don't think you should use it.

> Can I see a concrete example of what a real-life NOV line would look
> like, as written to nntp-server-buffer?

747	(provide 'nnmaildir)	Paul Jarc <prj@po.cwru.edu>	14 Jul 2000 19:10:18 -0400	<m3ya3448bp.fsf@multivac.student.cwru.edu>		5909	85	Xref: barbar.josefsson.org ding:747	

> Can I get away with using article numbers for references there?

I don't think so, they should be taken from the References: header.

> Why does gnus-nov-is-evil exist?

Some NNTP servers are broken wrt NOV.

> How does Gnus know whether a backend supports article identification
> by article number ranges or Message-IDs?  I guess backends must fail
> sensibly if they don't support these, hm?

Gnus doesn't know, so yes, you need to take care of it.  Call
(nnheader-report 'nnmaildir "I don't support message-id fetching") or
something.