Some agent whining (again)

Some agent whining (again)

[Bjørn Mork]

This may be unjustified, and basically my own fault, but I need to let
it out anyway...

I am sitting here offline, like I do a few times a year. And facing
the same problem I feel I have each and every time: I have (stupidly?)
kept updating to the latest and greatest CVS Gnus to get all the new
and shiny features, and somehow along the way it seems that the agent
has stopped working. Of course, as usual I have also been stupid
enough not to test it before going offline.

This time it seems that the default category somehow mysteriously has
changed predicate from short to false. Well, that's easy to change but
is breaking existing configurations really necessary? And how much
configuraton is an user expected to do just to use Agent? And why
can't I find this change mentioned in GNUS-NEWS?

I'm finished now. Pleas excuse the noise.


Bjørn
-- 
Man, I mean, don't you realise that the Russians are tapping your phone?  

Re: Some agent whining (again)

[Kevin Greiner]

Bjørn Mork <bmork@dod.no> writes:

> This may be unjustified, and basically my own fault, but I need to let
> it out anyway...
>
> I am sitting here offline, like I do a few times a year. And facing
> the same problem I feel I have each and every time: I have (stupidly?)
> kept updating to the latest and greatest CVS Gnus to get all the new
> and shiny features, and somehow along the way it seems that the agent
> has stopped working. Of course, as usual I have also been stupid
> enough not to test it before going offline.
>
> This time it seems that the default category somehow mysteriously has
> changed predicate from short to false.

The change was an accident.  The predicate for every new category
EXCEPT for 'default' is false.

The predicate for the 'default' category has been changed back to
short.  However, you won't notice it unless you delete your
agent/lib/categories file again.  If you don't want to do that, you'll
have to edit the predicate in the category.

> Well, that's easy to change but
> is breaking existing configurations really necessary?

Absolutely.  How else can we gain your appreciation except to patch the
errors that we previously introduced :).

> And how much
> configuraton is an user expected to do just to use Agent? 

I do believe that configurability is a cornerstone of gnus.

That being said, the default should match the documentation.

>And why
> can't I find this change mentioned in GNUS-NEWS?

The default category is stored, along with all other agent categories,
in agent/lib/categories.  Those categories override the internal
default so most people, including myself, didn't trigger the branch of
the code that you apparently traversed.

> I'm finished now. Pleas excuse the noise.
 
No problem.  Please accept the response with the appropriate jest.

BTW, the patch has been checked in.

Kevin