Re: "evil" nntp

[Steven L Baur <steve@miranova.com>]

>>>>> "Yair" == Yair Friedman <yair@cs.huji.ac.il> writes:

Yair> Does anyone has experience with setting nntp-nov-is-evil to t?
Yair> What exactly will I gain or lose by setting this variable?

Setting this variable only makes sense if netnews is set up on your
system to not provide XREF (cross reference information) in the
overview files Gnus reads to build group summaries.

A quick test to see if you need to use it is this (substitute your
nntp server, and use the last number returned on the 211 line as the
parameter to XOVER):

$ telnet news.callamer.com nntp
   Trying 199.74.141.7...
   Connected to twizzler.callamer.com.
   Escape character is '^]'.
   200 news.callamer.com InterNetNews NNRP server Netscape 1.1 951101 INN 1.4 22-Dec-93 ready (posting ok).
GROUP news.answers
   211 903 31117 32212 news.answers
XOVER 32212
   224 data follows
   32212   FAQ: comp.ai.genetic part 4/6 (A Guide to Frequently Asked Questions)  David.Beasley@cs.cf.ac.uk (David Beasley)        Mon, 18 Mar 1996 18:58:21 GMT  <part4_827175470@cs.cf.ac.uk>    <part3_827175470@cs.cf.ac.uk>   71671   1503
   .

If your output looks like this, your newsfeed is broken.  If you see a
field that looks similar to an Xref: line, then your newsfeed is O.K.

Assuming you have a broken newsfeed, you gain by setting
nntp-nov-is-evil the ability for Gnus to mark all crossposted articles
as read the first time you see them.  Otherwise, every crossposted
article is spam, and you see it over and over again if you also read
the other groups it is crossposted to.

You lose the ability to have Gnus fill in old headers to flesh
partially read threads with old articles.  This may not matter a whole
lot if expiration times are short.  Building group summaries is also
somewhat slower, though if your network connection to the news server
is decent this isn't a huge loss.

Regards,
-- 
steve@miranova.com baur
Unsolicited commercial e-mail will be proofread for $250/hour.
Andrea Seastrand: For your vote on the Telecom bill, I will vote for anyone
except you in November.