gnus-agent-convert-to-compressed-agentview error (was: gnus tries to run w3m)

gnus-agent-convert-to-compressed-agentview error (was: gnus tries to run w3m)

[Reiner Steib]

Kevin, could you please look into this?

On Mon, Jan 23 2006, Dan Nicolaescu wrote on bugs@gnus.org:

[ Switching back from January 2006 version to November 2005 version ]
> Trying to use gnus in the November version of emacs an error about
> gnus-agent-convert-to-compressed-agentview is produced... 
>
> Does anyone have any idea what is going on?

I've seen a couple of similar reports recently:

- <news:1137750787.388337.4270@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>
  http://www.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=1137750787.388337.4270%40f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com

- <news:op.s17fl6nfo2upmc@loopback>
  http://www.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=op.s17fl6nfo2upmc%40loopback
  (here's a translation of the German text:)

,----
| My Gnus - User-AgentGnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.0.50 (darwin) -
| aborts with the message above.  I didn't change anything in this Emacs
| [configuration].
| 
| In the error message it is written what to do, but I don't understand
| it (how to do it).
`----

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: gnus-agent-convert-to-compressed-agentview error (was: gnus tries to run w3m)

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+from-uce@imap.cc> writes:

  > Kevin, could you please look into this?
  > 
  > On Mon, Jan 23 2006, Dan Nicolaescu wrote on bugs@gnus.org:
  > 
  > [ Switching back from January 2006 version to November 2005 version ]
  > > Trying to use gnus in the November version of emacs an error about
  > > gnus-agent-convert-to-compressed-agentview is produced... 
  > >
  > > Does anyone have any idea what is going on?
  > 

More details about the above, the error message seems to be this:
gnus-agent-read-agentview no longer supports version %d.  Stop gnus,\
 manually evaluate gnus-agent-convert-to-compressed-agentview, then
 restart gnus.

But how to "manually evaluate gnus-agent-convert-to-compressed-agentview"  is
not obvious, that function takes one (undocumented) parameter and the
user cannot guess what that parameter might be. 
Another thing is that gnus-agent-convert-to-compressed-agentview is
not autoloaded, or loaded by default so for some users would be
difficult to even find the function... 

Re: gnus tries to run w3m

[Reiner Steib]

On Mon, Jan 23 2006, Dan Nicolaescu wrote:

> Gnus v5.11
> GNU Emacs 22.0.50.1 (sparc-sun-solaris2.8, X toolkit)
>
> When using gnus with the current Emacs CVS it tries to run w3m when
> visiting some messages.
>
> The w3m version that I have in my patch is old (0.3) so it does not
> like the flags passed, so the w3m help message is displayed in the
> article buffer instead of the article content. 
> This did not happen with an emacs check out from CVS at the end of
> November.
> I didn't change any settings. 

Katsumi Yamaoka changed some w3m related stuff recently.  Maybe he has
an idea.  [ Copying ding@gnus ]

> Why would gnus try to use html at all? There's a text/plain
> alternative, and I never enabled html in gnus... 

This is in the FAQ:

,----[ (info "(gnus)[4.6]") ]
| Question 4.6
| 
| I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the text part if
| it's available. How to do it?
`----

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: gnus tries to run w3m

[Katsumi Yamaoka]

>>>>> In <v9acdn2m5g.fsf@marauder.physik.uni-ulm.de> Reiner Steib wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 23 2006, Dan Nicolaescu wrote:

>> Gnus v5.11
>> GNU Emacs 22.0.50.1 (sparc-sun-solaris2.8, X toolkit)
>>
>> When using gnus with the current Emacs CVS it tries to run w3m when
>> visiting some messages.
>>
>> The w3m version that I have in my patch is old (0.3) so it does not
>> like the flags passed, so the w3m help message is displayed in the
>> article buffer instead of the article content.
>> This did not happen with an emacs check out from CVS at the end of
>> November.
>> I didn't change any settings.

> Katsumi Yamaoka changed some w3m related stuff recently.  Maybe he has
> an idea.  [ Copying ding@gnus ]

I know that problem, sorry.  I'll make an effort to make it work
with old w3m.  At any rate, the change I made is required to
display non-ASCII text including Latin-1.

BTW, you can customize the `mm-text-html-renderer' variable to
the value other than `w3m-standalone'.

 ,----[ (info "(gnus)[4.7]") ]
| Question 4.7
| 
| Can I use some other browser than w3 to render my HTML-mails?
 `----

>> Why would gnus try to use html at all? There's a text/plain
>> alternative, and I never enabled html in gnus... 

> This is in the FAQ:

> ,----[ (info "(gnus)[4.6]") ]
>| Question 4.6
>| 
>| I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the text part if
>| it's available. How to do it?
> `----

Re: gnus tries to run w3m

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+from-uce@imap.cc> writes:

  > On Mon, Jan 23 2006, Dan Nicolaescu wrote:

  > > Why would gnus try to use html at all? There's a text/plain
  > > alternative, and I never enabled html in gnus... 
  > 
  > This is in the FAQ:
  > 
  > ,----[ (info "(gnus)[4.6]") ]
  > | Question 4.6
  > | 
  > | I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the text part if
  > | it's available. How to do it?
  > `----

The problem is that I use the default value for
mm-discouraged-alternatives (wich is also the value indicated in the
above FAQ entry), so Gnus should not try to render HTML...

Re: gnus tries to run w3m

[Reiner Steib]

On Mon, Jan 23 2006, Dan Nicolaescu wrote:

> Reiner Steib <reinersteib+from-uce@imap.cc> writes:
[...]
>   > ,----[ (info "(gnus)[4.6]") ]
>   > | Question 4.6
>   > | 
>   > | I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the text part if
>   > | it's available. How to do it?
>   > `----
>
> The problem is that I use the default value for
> mm-discouraged-alternatives (wich is also the value indicated in the
> above FAQ entry), so Gnus should not try to render HTML...

The default value is nil (see mm-decode.el), but the FAQ entry
suggests to add "text/html" and "text/richtext".

Maybe you misinterpreted the text ``[...] then the value of this
variable should be set to: ("text/html" "text/richtext")'' in the doc
string as the default value?

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: gnus tries to run w3m

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> writes:

  > On Mon, Jan 23 2006, Dan Nicolaescu wrote:
  > 
  > > Reiner Steib <reinersteib+from-uce@imap.cc> writes:
  > [...]
  > >   > ,----[ (info "(gnus)[4.6]") ]
  > >   > | Question 4.6
  > >   > | 
  > >   > | I'd like Gnus NOT to render HTML-mails but show me the text part if
  > >   > | it's available. How to do it?
  > >   > `----
  > >
  > > The problem is that I use the default value for
  > > mm-discouraged-alternatives (wich is also the value indicated in the
  > > above FAQ entry), so Gnus should not try to render HTML...
  > 
  > The default value is nil (see mm-decode.el), but the FAQ entry
  > suggests to add "text/html" and "text/richtext".
  > 
  > Maybe you misinterpreted the text ``[...] then the value of this
  > variable should be set to: ("text/html" "text/richtext")'' in the doc
  > string as the default value?

Yep, you are right. I shouldn't have been looking at that so late at
night, sorry... 

Is this something new(ish)? I had the impression that by default Gnus
would display by default the text/plain alternative iff a message
contained text/plain and text/html alternatives.

Re: gnus tries to run w3m

[Reiner Steib]

On Mon, Jan 23 2006, Dan Nicolaescu wrote:

> Is this something new(ish)? I had the impression that by default Gnus
> would display by default the text/plain alternative iff a message
> contained text/plain and text/html alternatives.

No, there were only documentation additions in 2005.  From vc-annotate
(sorry for the long lines):

5.65         (larsi    04-Dec-99): (defcustom mm-discouraged-alternatives nil
5.46         (larsi    04-Jul-99):   "List of MIME types that are discouraged when viewing multipart/alternative.
5.42         (larsi    17-Apr-99): Viewing agents are supposed to view the last possible part of a message,
5.42         (larsi    17-Apr-99): as that is supposed to be the richest.  However, users may prefer other
5.42         (larsi    17-Apr-99): types instead, and this list says what types are most unwanted.  If,
5.77         (fx       27-Apr-00): for instance, text/html parts are very unwanted, and text/richtext are
5.42         (larsi    17-Apr-99): somewhat unwanted, then the value of this variable should be set
5.42         (larsi    17-Apr-99): to:
5.42         (larsi    17-Apr-99): 
7.33         (yamaoka  12-Dec-05):  (\"text/html\" \"text/richtext\")
7.33         (yamaoka  12-Dec-05): 
7.33         (yamaoka  12-Dec-05): Adding \"image/.*\" might also be useful.  Spammers use it as the
7.33         (yamaoka  12-Dec-05): prefered part of multipart/alternative messages.  See also
7.33         (yamaoka  12-Dec-05): `gnus-buttonized-mime-types', to which adding \"multipart/alternative\"
7.33         (yamaoka  12-Dec-05): enables you to choose manually one of two types those mails include."
7.33         (yamaoka  12-Dec-05):   :type '(repeat regexp) ;; See `mm-preferred-alternative-precedence'.
5.65         (larsi    04-Dec-99):   :group 'mime-display)

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: gnus tries to run w3m

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> writes:

  > On Mon, Jan 23 2006, Dan Nicolaescu wrote:
  > 
  > > Is this something new(ish)? I had the impression that by default Gnus
  > > would display by default the text/plain alternative iff a message
  > > contained text/plain and text/html alternatives.
  > 
  > No, there were only documentation additions in 2005.  From vc-annotate
  > (sorry for the long lines):
  > 
  > 5.65         (larsi    04-Dec-99): (defcustom mm-discouraged-alternatives nil
[snip]

Well, then something else is involved here. 
I just tried with Gnus from emacs-21.4 and for that version the
text/plain alternative is shown, for emacs CVS the text/html version
of the same message is shown. For both emacs versions
mm-discouraged-alternatives was not changed from the default.