gnus-warp-to-article (was: nnir, gnus-goto-article and such)

[Dave Abrahams <dave@boostpro.com>]

on Thu Sep 15 2011, Dave Abrahams <dave-AT-boostpro.com> wrote:

> I have this nifty function that lets me look up an article by
> message-id, no matter which of my groups it's in:
> (defun gnus-goto-article (message-id)
>   (with-current-buffer
>       (get-buffer-create (concat "*goto-article " message-id "*"))
>     (erase-buffer)
>     ;; insert dummy article
>     (insert (format "From nobody Tue Sep 13 22:05:34 2011\n\n"))
>     (gnus-group-read-ephemeral-group 
>      message-id
>      `(nndoc ,message-id 
>              (nndoc-address ,(current-buffer)) 
>              (nndoc-article-type mbox))
>      'activate 
>      (not    'quit-config) 
>      (not    'request-only) 
>      '(-1) ; 'select-articles
>      (not    'parameters)
>      0     ; ' number
>      )
>     (gnus-summary-refer-article message-id)))
> Now there are just two problems with this: 
>
> 1. (very minor): if I do `/ o' in the resulting buffer, I see the dummy
>    article, which is needed if I want to activate the group.  How can I
>    remove it from the group after activation?
>
> 2. (important) I'd like to see the whole thread (e.g. with `A T').  That
>    works fine if it's an IMAP article because nnir finds it.  However,
>    nnir doesn't work on nntp newsgroups.
>
>    It seems to me what's missing is some way of recording the source of
>    the message retrieved by gnus-summary-refer-article, and some way of
>    asking for a thread search in an nntp server.  Ideas?

Further investigation reveals that groups supporting
gnus-warp-to-article (virtual groups and nnir groups) already seem to do
something like that, and in such a group, `A T' would "just work."  If
anyone is able to offer further guidance here it would be most welcome.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com