Re: What is happening in agentized groups?

[Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>]

Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:

>> The Agent has a hard coded behaviour not to download read articles.
>> There was a patch that added a new predicate `read' and changed the
>> default predicate from short into (and (not read) short) but I
>> couldn't find a way to make it backwards compatible so I hesitated
>> about commiting it.  But I'm not sure if readedness is causing your
>> problem though.
>>
> How can I find out?

Do you read anything before downloading it into the Agent?  Then the
read articles shouldn't be downloaded.  Maybe this has changed, but I
don't think so (but I haven't really used the agent much for a while).

> About that readedness thing; shouldn't the agent just download
> according to predicate and score, not mindfull of readedness.
> One might read a message in plugged mode but still want it
> downloaded.   In fact, I would think that would be pretty much the
> norm.  I'd prefer the agent not pay attention to what I do when plugged.
>
> At the very least, a predicate of `true' should download everthing,
> regardless. I would think.

Yes, I think I agree.  But that intuition might be counter-obvious if
you consider nntp, where you usually begin by catching up thoose
50,000+ message before starting to follow a newsgroup.  You don't want
the agent to download all the old junk then.