Re: Need suggestions for changing agent's downloadable mark.

[Kevin Greiner <kgreiner@xpediantsolutions.com>]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> Kevin Greiner <kgreiner@xpediantsolutions.com> writes:
>
>> I've noticed a problem with the agent's downloadable mark.  As gnus
>> currently works, a downloadable mark will persist until either a) the
>> user manually removes it, or b) the agent successfully downloads the
>> marked article.
>>
>> What I've found, by reading my own newsrc file, is that I have a
>> number of ancient downloadable marks stored in it.  Apparently, I
>> marked a number of articles as downloadable then changed my mind and
>> ran catchup on the group.  Now, the server's active range has moved so
>> I can't get these articles back in the summary buffer to manually
>> remove the mark.
>>
>> I could fix this by editing the newsrc file but I'm concerned that any
>> number of people may have the same unrecognized problem.  What I need
>> is a process, either manual or automatic, that cleans up the
>> downloadable marks.
>>
>> Right now, my best idea is to change downloadable marks to say that
>> downloadable marks on READ articles will not be stored in the newsrc
>> file.  This is actually a very simple change to implement and, I
>> suspect, that it will have minimal impact on users.
>>
>> Would anyone object to this change?  Better yet, does anyone wish to
>> propose an alternative solution?
>
> How about removing downloadable marks on articles that are no longer
> within the active range?  IIRC, this is what happens with tick marks
> etc on out-of-bounds article numbers.  I'm a bit surprised it doesn't
> happen automatically for downloadable marks.  Or perhaps that
> behaviour is buggy for all marks now, I'm not sure I would notice if
> the flags weren't removed.

Any idea where I could find this functionality? I thought that
gnus-update-marks (gnus-sum.el) would be appropriate as it updates the
info structure but no luck.  The same was true of
gnus-gnus-to-quic-newsrc-format (gnus-start.el).  I think that your
suggestion is reasonable, I just don't know where to start with the
implementation.

Kevin