how to mark all but a number as read

how to mark all but a number as read

[Richard Riley]

Reconstructing my gnus setup I have resubscribed to an nntp group with
something like 29000 articles unread in it. I want to use the agent. How
can I mark all but the most recent N (say 200) articles as read so when
I do an agent fetch its doesn't fetch the lot?

Is it best to mark all as read and then enter the group and type 200 as
the amount to fetch, hilite all 200 and mark as unread by clearing the
mark? 

On that subject, mark as unread would seem a pretty useful top level
menu function as opposed to having to understand the complexities of
marks, process marks etc - stuff like "clear mark forward" suggests
complexities understood only by the boldest gnus user, is there
something as simple as "mark as unread" - yes I know M-u "clears all
marks of readedness". Also, wouldn't it be better for such "mark" menu
entries to be under "article" rather than Gnus?

Re: how to mark all but a number as read

[Richard Riley]

Richard Riley <rileyrg@googlemail.com> writes:

> On that subject, mark as unread would seem a pretty useful top level
> menu function as opposed to having to understand the complexities of
> marks, process marks etc - stuff like "clear mark forward" suggests
> complexities understood only by the boldest gnus user, is there
> something as simple as "mark as unread" - yes I know M-u "clears all
> marks of readedness". Also, wouldn't it be better for such "mark" menu
> entries to be under "article" rather than Gnus?
>

Small addendum : To follow up from that, it would be really, really,
really nice if operations like M-u worked on the region of selected
articles too - as it is when you hilite a bunch of articles and press
M-u the general assumption would be that all articles selected would be
marked as unread. Only the one under the cursor is - I think a definite
userability improvement if mark operations respect all selected articles
in the region.

Re: how to mark all but a number as read

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Richard Riley <rileyrg@googlemail.com> writes:

> Small addendum : To follow up from that, it would be really, really,
> really nice if operations like M-u worked on the region of selected
> articles too

`M-& M-u'.

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

Re: how to mark all but a number as read

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Richard Riley <rileyrg@googlemail.com> writes:

> Is it best to mark all as read and then enter the group and type 200 as
> the amount to fetch, hilite all 200 and mark as unread by clearing the
> mark? 

Yes, probably.

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