agent-score . file

agent-score . file

[Robert Epprecht]

Hi

I would like to share some experiences I had trying to let the Agent
use normal scoring rules for his downloading. (see Node: Category Syntax)

For people who like the 'offline' way of news reading it's fantastic.
You see a new interesting thread starting or something and just do
'I r r t' or the like and the Agent takes care that you will find the
messages downloaded. It's great!

But then, not quite: Sometimes it suddenly stops working and I can't
see why. Sometimes it happens just in one group, and sometimes in all
of them. I have tried to track it down for several weeks now, to be
able to report it here, but still do not understand what's happening.
Is there anybody else using it?

I have (agent-score . file) in the group parameters. I don't edit my
score files by hand (normally), but only with the interface that gnus
gives me ('I a s p' and the like). I don't think I do any scoring, that
the Agent does not understand (and the manual says, it would be skipped
anyway...). Or does the orphan rule give any problems?

While it is working great half of the time, it stops to do so every now
and then. The messages are still scored like they should be, but the
Agent does not download them. I couldn't figure out any difference
between groups where it is working and those, that stopped working.
I need some advice what to try next.

My ISP's news server is not very stable. Could be, that the problems
I see originate there. But even then, I would like to see Gnus and
the Agent recover better after problems like a news server breaking
down during transmission and the like.

BTW: Shouldn't the Agent also see the all.SCORE file? It does not seem
to do so.

Is it possible to put '(agent-score . file)' in the topics parameter?
I was not able to do it this way.

Robert Epprecht

Re: agent-score . file

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Robert Epprecht <epprecht@sunweb.ch> writes:

> But then, not quite: Sometimes it suddenly stops working and I can't
> see why. Sometimes it happens just in one group, and sometimes in all
> of them. I have tried to track it down for several weeks now, to be
> able to report it here, but still do not understand what's happening.
> Is there anybody else using it?

I don't think I've ever tried it...

> Is it possible to put '(agent-score . file)' in the topics parameter?

It should be -- it uses `gnus-group-find-parameter', which looks up
the topic parameters.  Er.  If it is called in the group buffer, which 
it probably isn't.  Oops.  Fix in Pterodactyl Gnus v0.97.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: agent-score . file

[Mike McEwan]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> It should be -- it uses `gnus-group-find-parameter', which looks up
> the topic parameters.  Er.  If it is called in the group buffer, which 
> it probably isn't.  Oops.  Fix in Pterodactyl Gnus v0.97.

(defun gnus-group-find-parameter (group &optional symbol allow-list)
  "Return the group parameters for GROUP.
If SYMBOL, return the value of that symbol in the group parameters."
  (save-excursion
    (set-buffer gnus-group-buffer)
    (let ((parameters (funcall gnus-group-get-parameter-function group)))
      (if symbol
	  (gnus-group-parameter-value parameters symbol allow-list)
	parameters))))

  Isn't that what the `set-buffer' is for?

-- 
Mike  <mike@lotusland.demon.co.uk>

Re: agent-score . file

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Mike McEwan <mike@lotusland.demon.co.uk> writes:

>   Isn't that what the `set-buffer' is for?

Indeedy.  Then that isn't the problem.  :-/

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: agent-score . file

[Mike McEwan]

Robert Epprecht <epprecht@sunweb.ch> writes:

> While it is working great half of the time, it stops to do so every now
> and then. The messages are still scored like they should be, but the
> Agent does not download them. I couldn't figure out any difference
> between groups where it is working and those, that stopped working.
> I need some advice what to try next.

  Are the groups where things have "stopped working" in the same agent
category as the others? What is the the predicate you are using for
the categories concerned?
 
> Is it possible to put '(agent-score . file)' in the topics parameter?
> I was not able to do it this way.

  Seems fine here with pgnus-0.96.

-- 
Mike  <mike@lotusland.demon.co.uk>

Re: agent-score . file

[Robert Epprecht]

Mike McEwan <mike@lotusland.demon.co.uk> writes:

>   Are the groups where things have "stopped working" in the same agent
> category as the others? What is the the predicate you are using for
> the categories concerned?
>  

Yes, they are all in my default category, which has the predicate 'high'.

I have another category called 'high' with identical predicate 'high'.
Changing the group from my default one to my 'high' category and vice
versa does not seem to make any difference. (At least most of the time.
Once it did, but it seemed to be accidental).

Hmm, testing and inquiring some more I just found out, that it does not
always succed or fail on a group wise base, but single messages in one
group can behave different. Let's see:

'V t' on an article that was downloaded gives:
("<7sgb7i\\$5hu\\$1@sifnos\\.ifi\\.unizh\\.ch>" nil 730023 r)  ->\
  /home/g/News/gnu.emacs.gnus.SCORE
'V S' -> 500

'V t' on an article that was not:
("Kai Großjohann" nil nil s)  ->  /home/g/News/all.SCORE
("Kai Großjohann" nil nil s)  ->  /home/g/News/gnu.emacs.gnus.SCORE
'V S' -> 2000

Hmm, I'll throw Kai out of my all.SCORE file next, just to try it, though
I don't like to do that...

> > Is it possible to put '(agent-score . file)' in the topics parameter?
> > I was not able to do it this way.
> 
>   Seems fine here with pgnus-0.96.

ok, I'll try again...

Robert Epprecht

Re: agent-score . file

[Robert Epprecht]

Since I have v0.97 most of my problems with letting the Agent use
'normal' scoring rules for download score have gone. I can't be
sure if it's related to the new version (because it had switched
between working and not working mysteriously before) but it looks
like. With a few exceptions (see below) all high scored articles
in all the groups are now downloaded like they should. This includes
now the scoring rules of all.SCORE and works with (agent-score . file)
in topics parameters. I can also change from (agent-score . file) to
'nil' in group parameters, all that did not work before for me.

I have very few articles where it still does not work. All of them 
have non ASCII characters in their scoring rules. (Other rules work
in spite such characters). Normal scoring does work on these messages,
so I guess it must have to do with different en/decoding of these
characters when doing normal scoring and when the agent does his thing.


(BTW   What made my search for the suspected bug so difficult, that I
took scoring on 'Kai Großjohann' - with that 'ß' in it - as my main
test case... on one hand I do find his messages worth reading and
then there are so many of them, there's always something to test on ;-)
When I tested two different ways of doing it I did take one setup
for the english, and another one for the german groups, which was
very foolish of me... Kai seems to have experimented with different
header encodings in the german groups (as he reported here) in the
same time... Can you imagine how confused I was? )

Robert Epprecht