splitting .newsrc.eld

splitting .newsrc.eld

[Steinar Bang]

Could it be an idea to split .newsrc.eld, into a mail part, and a news
part?

Right now, I'm in the position that I may have to try out using a news
server temporarily.  What I'll do then, is save away the current
~/.newsrc*, and the ~/Mail/active file.

If I would like to switch back in a week (say), and would like the
mail read in that period to survive, but would accept stepping back a
week in news, I would have to manually merge the two .newsrc.eld
files.

This may work, but seems clumsy and hazardous.


- Steinar

Re: splitting .newsrc.eld

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:

> Could it be an idea to split .newsrc.eld, into a mail part, and a news
> part?

Well, it would be kinda difficult to do, really...

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

.newsrc.eld

[Dan Christensen]

Is there some reason that there aren't more linebreaks in the
.newsrc.eld file?  Having one group per line would sure make it
easier to edit by hand.

Dan

-- 
Dan Christensen
jdc@math.jhu.edu

Re: .newsrc.eld

[Andy Eskilsson]

/ jdc@chow.mat.jhu.edu (Dan Christensen) wrote:
| Is there some reason that there aren't more linebreaks in the
| .newsrc.eld file?  Having one group per line would sure make it
| easier to edit by hand.

Yup but..
  1. .newsrc.eld isn't supposed to be edited by hand
  2. Having one group per line would increase the size of the file
     enormously I believe..

But of the records, what I do when I edit my .newsrc.eld file is
replace all ')'s with ')[newline]', warning though, remember that some
paranthesis might be inside strings, so when you are finished replace
)[newline] with ) (arrgh hate macs)

	/ A

Re: .newsrc.eld

[Christian Limpach]

Andy Eskilsson <flognat@fukt.hk-r.se> writes:

>   2. Having one group per line would increase the size of the file
>      enormously I believe..

the size of a file does not change when you seperate two groups by a
newline instead of a space, only the number of lines will increase...
Of course, the spaces could just be removed completely to reduce the
file size.

> But of the records, what I do when I edit my .newsrc.eld file is
> replace all ')'s with ')[newline]', warning though, remember that some
> paranthesis might be inside strings, so when you are finished replace
> )[newline] with ) (arrgh hate macs)

maybe if the spaces were removed, you could replace )( by )[newline](,
this might be more reliable...

    christian

Re: .newsrc.eld

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

jdc@math.jhu.edu (Dan Christensen) writes:

> Is there some reason that there aren't more linebreaks in the
> .newsrc.eld file?

Yes.  I use `prin1' to output the alist.

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

Re: splitting .newsrc.eld

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>:

> Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:
>> Could it be an idea to split .newsrc.eld, into a mail part, and a news
>> part?

> Well, it would be kinda difficult to do, really...

Hm,... why?

I'm a little bit worried about the vulnerability of my .newsrc.eld,
especially as it gets bigger.  It contains Group Parameters (lots of
work to reconstruct), ticked articles in mail groups (*essential*),
and ticked, read, etc. articles in news groups (seldom essential).

It's the last part that tends to be growing, no...?


- Steinar

Re: splitting .newsrc.eld

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:

> > Well, it would be kinda difficult to do, really...
> 
> Hm,... why?

Because Gnus isn't set up to work that way.

> I'm a little bit worried about the vulnerability of my .newsrc.eld,
> especially as it gets bigger.  It contains Group Parameters (lots of
> work to reconstruct), ticked articles in mail groups (*essential*),
> and ticked, read, etc. articles in news groups (seldom essential).
> 
> It's the last part that tends to be growing, no...?

It shouldn't be.  Marks for articles that have expired from the news
server are discarded, so you should get up to holding size for news
groups after using Gnus for a couple of weeks.

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

Re: splitting .newsrc.eld

[David Moore]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:
> > I'm a little bit worried about the vulnerability of my .newsrc.eld,
> > especially as it gets bigger.  It contains Group Parameters (lots of
> > work to reconstruct), ticked articles in mail groups (*essential*),
> > and ticked, read, etc. articles in news groups (seldom essential).
> > 
> > It's the last part that tends to be growing, no...?
> 
> It shouldn't be.  Marks for articles that have expired from the news
> server are discarded, so you should get up to holding size for news
> groups after using Gnus for a couple of weeks.

but if you have an early article cached, then no marks will be removed
for articles after that point even if they have expired.  instead of
using the active range for the cache/server combined, the marks should
be flushed by using the server active range and the set of cached
articles.


-- 
David Moore <dmoore@ucsd.edu>       | Computer Systems Lab      __o
UCSD Dept. Computer Science - 0114  | Work: (619) 534-8604    _ \<,_
La Jolla, CA 92093-0114             | Fax:  (619) 534-1445   (_)/ (_)
<URL:http://oj.egbt.org/dmoore/>    | In a cloud bones of steel.

Re: splitting .newsrc.eld

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>:

> Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:
>> > Well, it would be kinda difficult to do, really...
>> 
>> Hm,... why?

> Because Gnus isn't set up to work that way.

>> I'm a little bit worried about the vulnerability of my .newsrc.eld,
>> especially as it gets bigger.  It contains Group Parameters (lots of
>> work to reconstruct), ticked articles in mail groups (*essential*),
>> and ticked, read, etc. articles in news groups (seldom essential).
>> 
>> It's the last part that tends to be growing, no...?

> It shouldn't be.  Marks for articles that have expired from the news
> server are discarded, so you should get up to holding size for news
> groups after using Gnus for a couple of weeks.

You're right, of course.  But the center of my problem with having
everything in a single file, is somewhere in this confusion.  So, Let
me rephrase: it's the last part that takes up the major part for the
~/.newsrc.el file.

It's the part which takes the longest time to save, everytime you save
the file.  It's the least valuable (to me) part of the file.

Re: splitting .newsrc.eld

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:

> It's the part which takes the longest time to save, everytime you save
> the file.  It's the least valuable (to me) part of the file.

Yes, but it'll have to be saved anyway, so I don't quite see how
splitting helps much...

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

Re: splitting .newsrc.eld

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>:

> Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:
>> It's the part which takes the longest time to save, everytime you save
>> the file.  It's the least valuable (to me) part of the file.

> Yes, but it'll have to be saved anyway, so I don't quite see how
> splitting helps much...

The smaller the file, the shorter time it needs to complete a write,
the shorter the risk for corruption.

Re: splitting .newsrc.eld

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:

> The smaller the file, the shorter time it needs to complete a write,
> the shorter the risk for corruption.

Yes, but if you have a problem with files getting corrupted while
writing, something very wrong is going on on your system.  I've never
had Emacs corrupt something while writing.

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

Re: splitting .newsrc.eld

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>:

> Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:
>> The smaller the file, the shorter time it needs to complete a write,
>> the shorter the risk for corruption.

> Yes, but if you have a problem with files getting corrupted while
> writing, something very wrong is going on on your system.  I've never
> had Emacs corrupt something while writing.

Hmmnm... it's been a long time since something like this happened to
me, and was caused by a rather ill NFS. 

Nevertheless it *can* happen! (and it has happened to me, but not with
the .newsrc.eld)

And having essential information (mail stuff), make up a small part,
of a big complex file, filled with mostly non-essential information
(news stuff) feels fragile.

And having to hand edit, and hand extract information from the
.newsrc.eld (as *have* happened to me, when I've tried experimental
versions of Gnus) has absolutly *no* pleasure value assigned to it.

Smaller files, would make manual error recovery (more) feasible.

Sigh! How about some form of .newsrc.eld syntax checker? Could be
external to Gnus proper.  A kind of error recovery/debugging tool.


- Steinar

Re: splitting .newsrc.eld

[Kai Grossjohann]

>>>>> Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:
  Steinar> Could it be an idea to split .newsrc.eld, into a mail part,
  Steinar> and a news part?

How about a by-server split?

kai
-- 
A large number of young women don't trust men with beards.
(BFBS Radio)

Re: splitting .newsrc.eld

[SL Baur]

Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:

> Could it be an idea to split .newsrc.eld, into a mail part, and a news
> part?

I've been begging for this for almost 2 years now.

I have a huge investment in time built up in my Gnus mail groups, but
could care less (except for subscription) about news groups - they
expire very quickly off the nntp server I have access to.  A day or
two of missing news is a nuisance, a loss of 2 years of readership of
mail is a total disaster.

Lars, please reconsider your position on this?  Please?  Pretty please?

Re: splitting .newsrc.eld

[Lars Balker Rasmussen]

Kurt Swanson <ksw@dna.lth.se> writes:
>   (defun gnus-kurt-get-active-file ()
>     "Get the active file from the server at start-up, and only at start-up."
>     (gnus-read-active-file t)
>     (remove-hook 'gnus-group-menu-hook 'gnus-kurt-get-active-file))
> 
>   (add-hook 'gnus-group-menu-hook 'gnus-kurt-get-active-file)

Nice idea[1], but I could only make it work by using the
gnus-group-mode-hook, which I would think was the natural place?

[1] Reading the active file takes practically no time for me, so
    selfless as I am, I thought it was a silly change ;-)
-- 
Lars Balker Rasmussen, Software Engineer, Mjolner Informatics ApS
lbr@mjolner.dk

Re: splitting .newsrc.eld

[Lars Balker Rasmussen]

Kurt Swanson <ksw@dna.lth.se> writes:
> So when are we going to see a re-write of gnus in Beta, Lars?

I dunno.  When do you plan to start? ;-)

I don't work with or on the BETA system.  In fact I haven't used the
language since 1992.  We do work with other stuff you know! :-)

However, here's a draft:

	BETAgnus: @elispEmul(# do 'gnus.el' -> EvalLispFile #)

The elispEmul pattern is left as an exercise to the reader.
-- 
Lars Balker Rasmussen, Software Engineer, Mjolner Informatics ApS
lbr@mjolner.dk

Re: splitting .newsrc.eld

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

SL Baur <steve@xemacs.org> writes:

> I have a huge investment in time built up in my Gnus mail groups, but
> could care less (except for subscription) about news groups - they
> expire very quickly off the nntp server I have access to.  A day or
> two of missing news is a nuisance, a loss of 2 years of readership of
> mail is a total disaster.

That's true, but I don't really have any idea how to split the
.newsrc.eld file up in any meaningful way.

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