Re: `gnus-unseen-mark' everywhere

[Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>]

prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) writes:

> Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> wrote:
>> prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) writes:
>>> Well, at least some things other than "seen" should probably be still
>>> dealt with as they are now.  E.g., "cache" really shouldn't be stored
>>> in any backend, because the information "cache" represents has nothing
>>> to do with what is stored in the backend.
>>
>> Hm.  One could argue (as I probably did in our last discussion) that
>> the "seen" mark does not have to do with anything in the backend
>> either.
>
> It doesn't have to do with the backend itself, but it does have to do
> with what is stored via the backend - i.e., the articles.  OTOH,
> "cache" has to do with information always stored outside the backend.
> There's nothing outside the backend that "seen" depends on, or must be
> synchronized with, etc.

You could say that ".newsrc.eld" is outside of the backend and the
seen mark depends on it and is specific to .newsrc.eld.  Or even
.gnus.  Point is, seen is specific to one instance of Gnus and has to
be synchronized with that instance.  This is one view at least.  I'm
not sure we'll gut much further on this point.

>>> Gnus could define a list of marks that are supposed to be per-user in
>>> shared groups; [...]  Backends could then DTRT with whichever marks
>>> are included in that variable
> ...
>> Right now the dichotomy is between marks that belong in backends and
>> marks that doesn't belong there, and among the few marks that doesn't
>> belong in backends (seen cache download unsend score) only "seen" is
>> questionable.
>
> Or else all the others are; I think last time, the idea appeared that
> the information represented by those marks should perhaps not be
> represented by marks at all, but instead by something else.

Yup.  The marks could ideally be maintained by the Gnus Agent and Gnus
Cache themselves.  Seen could be maintained by Gnus.  Everything else
could be placed in the backends.  But this sounds like even more work.

> Did anything ever come of the proposed cache/agent unification?  

Water over head.  It would take some work to do it cleanly, and will
probably break everything in the process.  I wish I had more time to
work on it and then support it..

> I think such a project could also handle the de-mark-ification of at
> least "cache" and "download", right?

That could be another step in that project.  It is probably best to
unify the agent and the cache without touching marks first though.

Maybe we should start porting Gnus to Guile and clean up the design in
the process. But this sounds like really more work. :-)