Re: Summary scoring commands/a puzzle

[Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com>]

Nils Goesche <ngo@wossolit.teles.de> writes:

> Hi!
> 
> Indeed, the documentation for scoring in summary buffer could be clearer. I
> found it disencouraging because I didn't even see why I would want to score
> an article anyway. Of course, there are subjects and authors that interest
> me more than others, but exactly what would scoring an article help? I have
> read some article and likely won't read it again :) I would be glad if
> someone would be so kind and explain to me, why I would want to score
> articles after all, so I can start again reading the documentation :)


People have different uses for Usenet.  I am new to all this so want to
soak up as much info as possible.

Certain authors in the Emacs groups have posted lots of really useful
info.  I go back to those postings repeatedly.

Here is one example of how to use scoring:  
I have set several authors to be scored up, now when the nntp posting
arrive those authors are scored at 1000.  I read thru the new postings.
Whatever looks interesting.  When done I run the limited view command
like so:

'C-u 1000 / v'  This will show a view of only those messages scored at
1000.  Now I will 'tick' them all so they stay on my HDD.   When I get
lost using emacs or gnus I can call up all those ticked articles and
search them for answers.

Heres another example:  Lets say I want to know more about a dired
function than I am finding in the manual -- in this case dired-do-search
and replace

Go to comp.emacs Do 'C-u <enter>' this calls up all articles from server
plus what ever I have ticked maybe 6-7 hundred in all.

Using the scoring commands -- (score on body) I can send gnus through
all 6-7 hundred messages looking for a regular expression of my choosing.

Something like  dired-do-.*search.*replace.*$  <== this tells gnus to
find every instance in all articles where someone has mentioned
"dired-do" "search" "replace" but only if they are all on the same line,
and give it a score I determined.

NOTE:  There are probably more elegant expressions but as mentioned I am
just learning to use them.

Once this is done, I can limit the view to that score and study the
postings that contain the information I want.

A combination of scoring and limiting the view is a technique with many uses.

-- 

Harry Putnam  reader@newsguy.com