Re: nnmaildir

[prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc)]

Thomas Schwinge <schwinge-lists-gnus.org-ding@nic-nac-project.de> wrote:
> Now I'm running that latest CVS checkout of Gnus.
> Starting it gives some (harmless I presume) warnings:
> #v+
> [...]
> Loading easymenu...done
> Loading gnus-start...done
> Source file `/package/misc/spf/emacs-21.3-1/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/share/emacs/site-lisp/nntp.el' newer than byte-compiled file

Hm... I wonder if you're really running the version you think you're
running.  Make sure your .emacs adds the CVS Gnus to your load-path
before you load any Gnus components.  This may require starting emacs
with --no-site-file, since site-start.el is loaded before ~/.emacs,
and site-start.el might load some Gnus components.  (You can have your
.emacs load site-start.el after your load-path changes.)  If Gnus is
properly installed and properly loaded, I don't think these warnings
should appear.

> Shall I post the strace of Gnus (emacs) when entering such a maildir?

No, but a backtrace would be helpful.  Before triggering the error, do
M-x set-variable RET debug-on-error RET t RET.

> I don't quite get what I would do with the information that an
> article I'll be reading again later has been saved - since saving is
> just copying the article to another folger

Someone thought it was useful once, so now Gnus has it.  Such is the
way of Gnus. :)

> But how should 'dormant and 'save then be reflected?

I don't think there is any way to make them visible to other MUAs.
They will have to stay as they are now.

> In what way would my solution be ambiguous?

Suppose a message has the 'tick mark, and the user changes it to
'dormant.  Gnus tells nnmaildir to remove 'tick and add 'dormant.  You
say that nnmaildir should modify its own marks, but leave "F" in
place.  So now, according to the standard maildir flags, the message
is "F"lagged, but according to nnmaildir's separate marks, the message
is not 'tick-ed.

But there is another way we can arrive at this same situation: suppose
a message initially has neither 'tick or 'dormant, and the user adds
'dormant.  Later, another MUA adds "F".  So now, again, the message
has "F" and 'dormant but not 'tick.

So how do we interpret this state of stored information the next time
Gnus starts?  In the first case, we should presumably say that the
message still does not have 'tick.  In the second case, we would like
to say that the message now has 'tick - the "F" mark was added by
another MUA, and we want to pick up that change in Gnus too.  But
since the stored information is the same in these two cases, we can't
distinguish them, and so we can't get them both right.

>>> I had not tried that before - I thought that MUAs would leave the flags
>>> alone the didn't understand.
>>
>> Yes, but they also wouldn't be able to interpret them.
>
> So it should leave them alone.

I agree.

> But I was quite surprised when I saw mutt just weed out the flags it
> didn't understand.

Yes, that is surprising, and seems buggy.


paul