From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/55783 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: John Owens Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: No Gnus feature request: simpler file structure for synching between two machines Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 16:24:53 -0800 Sender: ding-owner@lists.math.uh.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1073454861 25994 80.91.224.253 (7 Jan 2004 05:54:21 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 05:54:21 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: ding-owner+M4323@lists.math.uh.edu Wed Jan 07 06:54:18 2004 Return-path: Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1Ae6e2-0006J9-00 for ; Wed, 07 Jan 2004 06:54:18 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1Ae6dr-00053o-00; Tue, 06 Jan 2004 23:54:07 -0600 Original-Received: from justine.libertine.org ([66.139.78.221] ident=postfix) by malifon.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1Ae1ad-0002gi-00 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Tue, 06 Jan 2004 18:30:27 -0600 Original-Received: from main.gmane.org (main.gmane.org [80.91.224.249]) by justine.libertine.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2FD1D3A0026 for ; Tue, 6 Jan 2004 18:30:26 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from root by main.gmane.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1Ae1aZ-0000Ot-00 for ; Wed, 07 Jan 2004 01:30:23 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-To: ding@gnus.org Original-Received: from sea.gmane.org ([80.91.224.252]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1Ae1VG-0000Lv-00 for ; Wed, 07 Jan 2004 01:24:54 +0100 Original-Received: from news by sea.gmane.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1Ae1VG-0007Qy-00 for ; Wed, 07 Jan 2004 01:24:54 +0100 Original-Lines: 44 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org User-Agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/21.3 (windows-nt) Cancel-Lock: sha1:RShpiCyAemqBWT+blGSl/3rQs8E= Precedence: bulk Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:55783 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:55783 I'd like to use gnus both in the office (on a desktop) and at home/on the road (on a laptop). This requires that I keep state on both machines. I'd like a simple way to synch the state files on the two machines. Ideally this could be handled within gnus (using the excellent "unison" to synch or something equivalent). But even doing it manually wouldn't be so bad. Unfortunately, the file structure for gnus is fairly complex. Kai points out that he synchs the following files to move state: "~/.newsrc*, ~/Mail/, ~/News/, ~/.nnmail-cache, and ~/.authinfo" He also mentioned porting the ".marks" code from nnml.el to nntp.el, which would "enable you to transfer a file that contains the marks for a particular server (or group). That way, different servers would be separated, and so you can transfer the state regarding a particular server." And another suggestion he had was to "set gnus-home-directory near the beginning of ~/.emacs (not ~/.gnus!) to a subdir of your home directory. Then you can just transfer one directory." In any case, this multitude of files seems like a great deal of complexity. And using synched gnus on multiple computers seems like an eminently useful feature. So, I would like to request: - What's the canonical list of files that belong to gnus that need to be synched to duplicate state? - What are the files for (only) reading news? - What are the files for the different mail backends (particularly nnimap)? - How could gnus (today) be configured to make this synch as easy as possible (as per Kai's gnus-home-directory suggestion above)? - How could gnus be changed in No Gnus to make a synch easier / painless / faster / transparent between multiple computers? Could the files be amalgamated into a single file or in a single directory? Could news and mail synch be separated (or should they be)? As this seems like a topic for a redesign of the file structure, perhaps it would be a worthy feature for No Gnus. Thanks for listening - JDO