From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/23573 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Harry Putnam Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: some mail annoyances Date: 25 Jun 1999 19:05:49 -0700 Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: References: <4yn1xp7ytu.fsf@sgichr.fastweb.no> <14195.59371.224963.121057@ralf.serv.net> <14196.6568.178842.849769@ralf.serv.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035161282 2764 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 00:48:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 00:48:02 +0000 (UTC) Return-Path: Original-Received: from farabi.math.uh.edu (farabi.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.57]) by sclp3.sclp.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA03823 for ; Fri, 25 Jun 1999 22:13:40 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (lists@Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by farabi.math.uh.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAB11171; Fri, 25 Jun 1999 21:09:41 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Fri, 25 Jun 1999 21:07:07 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com (root@sclp3.sclp.com [204.252.123.139]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA11467 for ; Fri, 25 Jun 1999 21:06:57 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from mail.networkone.net (qmailr@mail.networkone.net [209.144.112.75]) by sclp3.sclp.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id WAA03626 for ; Fri, 25 Jun 1999 22:05:56 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: (qmail 7258 invoked from network); 26 Jun 1999 02:06:10 -0000 Original-Received: from pm3-6-42.la.networkone.net (HELO satellite.local.lan) (reader@209.144.125.106) by mail.networkone.net with SMTP; 26 Jun 1999 02:06:10 -0000 Original-Received: (from reader@localhost) by satellite.local.lan (8.9.1/8.9.1) id TAA01080; Fri, 25 Jun 1999 19:05:50 -0700 Original-To: ding@gnus.org In-Reply-To: Stainless Steel Rat's message of "25 Jun 1999 20:19:25 -0400" Original-Lines: 42 User-Agent: Gnus/5.070083 (Pterodactyl Gnus v0.83) Emacs/20.3 Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:23573 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:23573 Stainless Steel Rat writes: > * Ken McGlothlen on Fri, 25 Jun 1999 > | That's an excellent idea; I wonder why that isn't the default. > > Because for most of us, manually marking articles expirable is the less- > common pastime. We follow the newsreaderly approach to reading mail, that > messages marked as read will be expunged automatically as if we were > reading from a news server unless we explicitly say otherwise (tick). Just my own habits, but I find myself wanting to keep more than half of my mail so ticking would be more time consuming than marking the ones I don't want with "E". But I'll admit I am a little leary of either auto or total expire. Heres why: More than once I've had the experience of loosing lots of saved messages when using "total expire". If for one reason or another a group gets all articles marked as unread (M-c) and you do a catchup to get back to something more reasonable, with out taking into account the repercussions, then all ticked or dormant articles (now unticked and undormanted) that are older than expiry-days are history. If I stick to defaults and expunge by hand, and something occurs to mark a group as unread, erasing marks, then nothing is lost to expiry, when catching up. In any event, pretending that reading mail is the same as reading news has to stop at the fact that no amount of ticking will save an nntp article from expiry. Hence the persistent mark, so why continue to act as if mail and news are the same. Several posters have pointed out that persistent marks in nnml or "mail" groups makes no sense. Why? Because it is not a newsgroup, nor is it news. It is not handled by gnus as if it were news either. Nntp posts will be expunged (expired) regardless of your marks, even unread. Gnus knows this. Not so in mail, whatever your settings. Gnus also knows this, and offers several ways to handle mail. So while there may be some confusion amongst gnus users about mail and news being different, Gnus itself understands a fundamental difference. Consequently gnus offers quite a wide variety of functions to deal with the difference between news and mail.