[comp.emacs] DejaNews URLs (was: Shell directory tracking)

[Jari Aalto <ssjaaa@uta.fi>]

	I just noticed this interesting Article. Would it be possible to
	add this kind of functionality to Gnus or W3?

	jari

------- Start of forwarded message -------
From: Toby Speight <Toby.Speight@digitivity.com>
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: DejaNews URLs (was: Shell directory tracking)
Date: 22 Oct 1998 14:36:57 +0100
Organization: Digitivity, Inc. <URL:http://digitivity.com/>
Message-ID: <uhfwwk9ae.fsf_-_@delivery.ansa.co.uk>
References: <7016p9$4h7$1@camelot.ccs.neu.edu> <vaf7ly2x4cp.fsf@ramses.cs.uni-dortmund.de> <708mm5$a94$1@camelot.ccs.neu.edu> <vaf90i8byi9.fsf@ramses.cs.uni-dortmund.de>
Mail-Copies-To: never

Kai> Kai Grossjohann <URL:mailto:Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE>

0> In <URL:news:vaf90i8byi9.fsf@ramses.cs.uni-dortmund.de>, Kai wrote:

Kai> <URL:http://www.dejanews.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=&DBS=1&ST=PS&defaultOp=OR
Kai> &LNG=ALL&format=terse&showsort=score&maxhits=100&subjects=tcsh
Kai> &groups=*emacs*&authors=&fromdate=&todate=>
Kai>
Kai> Try the above URL, result number 15 has the subject `tcsh completion'
Kai> and is from `Anonymous'.  That's what I was referring to.

It's more usual (and useful) to refer to news articles by Message-ID
(that's what Message-IDs are for!).  In this case, [1].  If you are
so attached to DejaNews, you could suggest [2] (though for some
reason this returns text/plain for something which is clearly a
message/rfc822).  Either of which is an unambiguous URL, not subject
to the same time-dependent changes as your directions above.  URLs
were designed exactly to remove the need for such descriptions.

[1] <URL:news:62h9l9$hm4@basement.replay.com>
[2] <URL:http://search.dejanews.com/msgid.xp?MID=%3C62h9l9$hm4@basement.replay.com%3E&fmt=raw>


ObEmacs:

;; works with Gnus 5.5 and W3 4.0pre23
;; I'm not actively maintaining this, so post fixes to Usenet

(defun fetch-message-intelligently (message-id)
  "Fetch MESSAGE-ID."
  (interactive "sMessage-Id: ")
  (save-excursion
    (or (fetch-message-from-nntp message-id)
        (fetch-message-from-dejanews message-id))))

(defun fetch-message-from-dejanews (message-id)
  "Fetch MESSAGE-ID from DejaNews archive."
  (interactive "sMessage-Id: ")
  (w3-fetch (concat "http://search.dejanews.com/msgid.xp?MID=%3C" message-id "%3E&fmt=raw"))
  (let ((gnus-article-buffer w3-last-buffer)
        (inhibit-read-only t))
    (gnus-article-highlight)))

(defun fetch-message-from-nntp (message-id)
  (interactive "sMessage-Id: ")
  ;; can use either `gnus-request-article' or `nntp-request-article' here...
  (and (nntp-request-article (concat "<" message-id ">"))
       (eval-and-compile
         (condition-case nil (require 'url-news) (error nil)))
       (url-format-news)))

------- End of forwarded message -------