The Agent now downloading gigs of old articles...

The Agent now downloading gigs of old articles...

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

I've just done a "cvs up", and the new Agent code seems pretty
download happy.  It seems to be downloading, well, everything.  Is it
supposed to do that, or should I start poking around for bugs?

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

Re: The Agent now downloading gigs of old articles...

[kgreiner]

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

> I've just done a "cvs up", and the new Agent code seems pretty
> download happy.  It seems to be downloading, well, everything.  Is it
> supposed to do that, or should I start poking around for bugs?
>
> -- 
> (domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
>    larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Kai reported a similar problem when testing the code.  He ended up
tracing it back to an agent predicate that was set to true.  Once he
changed the predicate to short, his problem went away.

Aside from that one case, I haven't heard of anything similar.

Kevin

Re: The Agent now downloading gigs of old articles...

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

kgreiner@xpediantsolutions.com writes:

> Kai reported a similar problem when testing the code.  He ended up
> tracing it back to an agent predicate that was set to true.  Once he
> changed the predicate to short, his problem went away.

Hm, yes, I do have `true' as the predicate in many of the
hierarchies...

Anyway, I just let it run, and now it's downloaded the stuff it
wanted.  Subsequent `J s'-ing doesn't download anything more, so I
guess that it's satisfied now.  :-)

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

Re: The Agent now downloading gigs of old articles...

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Anyway, I fiddled with the fonts a bit for the downloaded articles,
because I couldn't read the old ones on my screen at all.  But I now
remember why I didn't want that to be a font at all -- the fonts are
basically just used for scores and read/unread, and we have fonts
that multiplex those onto each other (due to the non-additiveness of
Emacs's (old) font system).  The downloaded font now overrides
those.  I think it would be better to get rid of the font and get the
mark back.

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

Re: The Agent now downloading gigs of old articles...

[kgreiner]

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

> Anyway, I fiddled with the fonts a bit for the downloaded articles,
> because I couldn't read the old ones on my screen at all.  But I now
> remember why I didn't want that to be a font at all -- the fonts are
> basically just used for scores and read/unread, and we have fonts
> that multiplex those onto each other (due to the non-additiveness of
> Emacs's (old) font system).  The downloaded font now overrides
> those.  I think it would be better to get rid of the font and get the
> mark back.
>
> -- 
> (domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
>    larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

and I fiddled a little more.  The font is now applied to undownloaded,
not downloaded, articles so that should help with much of the
multiplexing.  I've also created three faces so that undownloaded
articles still provide a visual clue to the article's score.

Kai's +/- download mark has been committed.  It uses the format ?O
rather than ?+ because I found that the gnus manual already described
?O as the downloaded mark.

Kevin

Re: The Agent now downloading gigs of old articles...

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

kgreiner@xpediantsolutions.com writes:

> and I fiddled a little more.  The font is now applied to undownloaded,
> not downloaded, articles so that should help with much of the
> multiplexing.  I've also created three faces so that undownloaded
> articles still provide a visual clue to the article's score.

That's nice, but it's now using (for me) white on Wheat1 on
undownloaded articles.  (And why is it called "uncached"?)  You
should differentiate between dark and light screens when doing
colors, and specify both foreground and background, if you want to
change the background color.

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

Re: The Agent now downloading gigs of old articles...

[kgreiner]

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

> kgreiner@xpediantsolutions.com writes:
>
>> and I fiddled a little more.  The font is now applied to undownloaded,
>> not downloaded, articles so that should help with much of the
>> multiplexing.  I've also created three faces so that undownloaded
>> articles still provide a visual clue to the article's score.
>
> That's nice, but it's now using (for me) white on Wheat1 on
> undownloaded articles.  (And why is it called "uncached"?)  You
> should differentiate between dark and light screens when doing
> colors, and specify both foreground and background, if you want to
> change the background color.
>
> -- 
> (domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
>    larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

white on Wheat1 ?? - yuck.  OK, how about your color scheme except
that we replace darkslategray with cyan4 as my eyes have a hard time
distinquishing between black and slate gray?  I can't comment on the
light gray for the dark background as I can't figure out how to invert
my video.

As for uncached, well I'd been reading too many old articles
suggesting that the cache and agent should be merged.  Personally, I
also prefer uncached as a word than undownloaded or unfetched.

If anyone wants to try an alternative color scheme, here's one:

(defface gnus-summary-high-uncached-face
   '((((class color)
       (background light))
      (:bold t :foreground "cyan4" :bold nil))
     (((class color) (background dark))
      (:bold t :foreground "LightGray" :bold nil))
     (t (:inverse-video t :bold t)))
  "Face used for high interest uncached articles.")

(defface gnus-summary-low-uncached-face
   '((((class color)
       (background light))
      (:italic t :foreground "cyan4" :bold nil))
     (((class color) (background dark))
      (:italic t :foreground "LightGray" :bold nil))
     (t (:inverse-video t :italic t)))
  "Face used for low interest uncached articles.")

(defface gnus-summary-normal-uncached-face
   '((((class color)
       (background light))
      (:foreground "cyan4" :bold nil))
     (((class color) (background dark))
      (:foreground "LightGray" :bold nil))
     (t (:inverse-video t)))
  "Face used for normal interest uncached articles.")

Kevin

Re: The Agent now downloading gigs of old articles...

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

kgreiner@xpediantsolutions.com writes:

> As for uncached, well I'd been reading too many old articles
> suggesting that the cache and agent should be merged.

That may be the case, but probably not.  The cache is for storing
stuff you want forever.  The Agent is an offline news reader with
expiry and stuff.  They happen to be implemented pretty similarly,
but the functionality is pretty different.

> Personally, I also prefer uncached as a word than undownloaded or
> unfetched.

Well, it's quite confusing to call variables according to what they
aren't.

> If anyone wants to try an alternative color scheme, here's one:

I've applied that one.

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

Re: The Agent now downloading gigs of old articles...

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

kgreiner@xpediantsolutions.com writes:

> As for uncached, well I'd been reading too many old articles
> suggesting that the cache and agent should be merged.

That may be the case, but probably not.  The cache is for storing
stuff you want forever.  The Agent is an offline news reader with
expiry and stuff.  They happen to be implemented pretty similarly,
but the functionality is pretty different.

> Personally, I also prefer uncached as a word than undownloaded or
> unfetched.

Well, it's quite confusing to call variables according to what they
aren't.

> If anyone wants to try an alternative color scheme, here's one:

I've applied that one.

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

Re: The Agent now downloading gigs of old articles...

[kgreiner]

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

> kgreiner@xpediantsolutions.com writes:
>
>> As for uncached, well I'd been reading too many old articles
>> suggesting that the cache and agent should be merged.
>
> That may be the case, but probably not.  The cache is for storing
> stuff you want forever.  The Agent is an offline news reader with
> expiry and stuff.  They happen to be implemented pretty similarly,
> but the functionality is pretty different.
>
>> Personally, I also prefer uncached as a word than undownloaded or
>> unfetched.
>
> Well, it's quite confusing to call variables according to what they
> aren't.
>

OK, I'll agree that I missed the call on the variable names.  The only
problem is that, if I change them now, anyone who customized the face
by the old name will loose their customization.  Should I care?  You
just made a release, does that make this a good time for this sort of
fix?

Kevin

Re: The Agent now downloading gigs of old articles...

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

kgreiner@xpediantsolutions.com writes:

> OK, I'll agree that I missed the call on the variable names.  The only
> problem is that, if I change them now, anyone who customized the face
> by the old name will loose their customization.  Should I care?  You
> just made a release, does that make this a good time for this sort of
> fix?

It's still an alpha release, so I think it's OK to change it now.
After 5.10, it's definitely too late...

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

Cache/Agent Integration

[kgreiner]

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

> kgreiner@xpediantsolutions.com writes:
>
>> As for uncached, well I'd been reading too many old articles
>> suggesting that the cache and agent should be merged.
>
> That may be the case, but probably not.  The cache is for storing
> stuff you want forever.  The Agent is an offline news reader with
> expiry and stuff.  They happen to be implemented pretty similarly,
> but the functionality is pretty different.

I just noticed that gnus-agent-catchup marked CACHED articles as read
simply because they were not in the agent.  Previously, I had to
change the gnus-agent-fetch-session code to not fetch expired articles
simply because they had a cached mark.

If the cache is for storing stuff forever then can't we add that to
the agent?  Would it be sufficient to simply have the agent expiration
process ignore articles that had a cached mark?

Alternatively, can we keep the agent and cache as distinct features
yet use the same directory structure for both?

Thanks,
Kevin

Re: Cache/Agent Integration

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

kgreiner@xpediantsolutions.com writes:

> If the cache is for storing stuff forever then can't we add that to
> the agent?  Would it be sufficient to simply have the agent expiration
> process ignore articles that had a cached mark?

I have, in the past, just done a "rm -r" on the Agent hierarchy, but
I'd never do that on the cache hierarchy.  So for me, the two needs
different physical storage.

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

Re: Cache/Agent Integration

[Kevin Greiner]

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

> kgreiner@xpediantsolutions.com writes:
>
>> If the cache is for storing stuff forever then can't we add that to
>> the agent?  Would it be sufficient to simply have the agent expiration
>> process ignore articles that had a cached mark?
>
> I have, in the past, just done a "rm -r" on the Agent hierarchy, but
> I'd never do that on the cache hierarchy.  So for me, the two needs
> different physical storage.

Since integrating the cache and agent on the backend is out of the
question, I've added code to the summary to perform a front-end
integration.  The result is that articles placed in either the cache
or the agent will be displayed (by face and download marker) as
downloaded.

Kevin