0.98 + topics = catastrophe (Was: Pterodactyl Gnus v0.98 is released)

[Matt Swift <swift@alum.mit.edu>]

>>"P" == Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:

    P> Now lets get a real release.  Please.  It is getting really
    P> difficult to justify advising newbies against pGnus, especially
    P> if they want to use it for mail.

Well, with all this enthusiasm around, and encouraged by seeing that
working with the Server buffer seemed to be free of significant bugs,
I got a bit bolder and started to use topics in the Group buffer.  Big
mistake.  The first sign something was wrong was when my one zombie
group kept popping up in weird places, duplicating itself.  Generally
when this ghost-of-a-zombie appeared, I could kill it but not yank it
again.

On quitting Gnus/Emacs and restarting, I found that my entire Gnus
state in .newsrc had been blown away.  I lost everything but the list
of subscribed groups (no levels, no history of read articles, etc.).

Seems to me that you don't want to call a program that looses
important data so easily even 'beta', much less `stable'.

I don't point this out to complain, but if you ask me whether pGnus
0.98 is close to graduating from `alpha' status, my answer is
emphatically 'no'.