Re: TODO idea:

[Scott Blachowicz <scott@apple.statsci.com>]

Wesley Hardaker <whardake@sphysdec1.unil.ch> wrote:

> you missed the point of the discussion, which was that there are a lot
> of people (ok, me and like 2 others) that want to be able to read mail
> without having to jump into emacs to do it

Make that 3 :-).

Let's try a modification of your scenario to illustrate a problem...

>...
>   cur: 15
>   unseen: 8, 16-18
> 
> If gnus had written this out at #1 above, I would be in heaven here as
> I could then go on and read, say, article 17.  Which would change the
> unseen sequence to 8,16,18.  Say, then, I did an incorperate of the
> new mail while at home in mh mode and this added a article 19.  A scan
> (as above) shows me the subject and it looks boring (ie, its not from
> the ding list), so I don't read it.

Let's say instead that you read article 18 instead of 17.  Then you end up
with an unseen seq of 8,16,17 and when you do your 'inc', you end up with
a new article 18 (instead of 19).

> I go back to work the next day and start up gnus.  Now, Gnus gets
> screwed here because I did stuff behind its back.

True...but the problem is more subtle.  The unseen sequence is the same,
but the messages it refers to are different.  I suppose that could be
solved by comparing Message-ID's of all of the messages when the
.mh_sequences file is newer than the NOV file.  Or just compare the update
times on the individual message files with the update time on the
.mh_sequences file and update the newer messages, remove ones that no
longer exist, etc.

Or we could put a hack into mh/nmh that makes it so that message numbers
are not reused (unless you do a 'pack' or some other command that
explicitly, intentionally does so)?

All of the above problems are basically why I stopped trying to use an emacs
newsreader to read my email (from gnus4 days and the "mixspool" hack that I'd
put into THAT).  Now I've been using exmh and nmh directly...

Scott Blachowicz  Ph: 206/283-8802x240   Mathsoft (Data Analysis Products Div)
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