From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/37425 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Backend writing Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2001 15:39:59 -0400 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035172843 13818 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 04:00:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 04:00:43 +0000 (UTC) Return-Path: Return-Path: Original-Received: (qmail 24820 invoked from network); 3 Aug 2001 19:40:00 -0000 Original-Received: from multivac.student.cwru.edu (HELO multivac.cwru.edu) (261@129.22.96.25) by gnus.org with SMTP; 3 Aug 2001 19:40:00 -0000 Original-Received: (qmail 17076 invoked by uid 500); 3 Aug 2001 19:40:21 -0000 Mail-Followup-To: ding@gnus.org Original-To: ding@gnus.org In-Reply-To: (Sean Rima's message of "Fri, 03 Aug 2001 19:04:07 +0100") User-Agent: Gnus/5.090004 (Oort Gnus v0.04) Emacs/20.7 Original-Lines: 29 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:37425 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:37425 Sean Rima writes: > What I seek is a detailed FAQ on writing backends. Anyone know where I > could get one, part from the info files. If there's anything you need to know that isn't in the manual, it probably ought to be added. Ask questions here so the maintainers know what to add. One thing that I would have liked to find there, but didn't, is what conditions article numbers must satisfy. Numbers of new articles must be greater than all existing numbers. They should probably start from 1; they must not be zero or negative. As long as you start from 1 and increment by 1, don't worry about what happens when you reach 2^28 (the largest integer Elisp can handle); no one else does, and it hasn't been a problem yet. Unless you do something unusual like nnmaildir does, an article must keep the same number for its entire lifetime - once assigned to an article, a number cannot be reassigned to another article. nnfoo-request-scan is described as optional - Gnus can get by without it - but it'll make your life easier if you implement it. That was my experience, anyway. A good way too see what precise format things must be in in nntp-server-buffer is to look at the contents of that buffer (" *nntpd*") while using an existing backend. paul