Re: some mail annoyances

[Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE]

Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:

  > Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE writes:
  > 
  > > Hm.  In the past, I have set up Gnus for a couple of people as
  > > follows: when a mail is selected, it is automatically ticked, and
  > > total-expire is turned on.
  > 
  > Kai, Is the auto ticking done by some existing functionality in gnus?

Well...  There is a variable gnus-mark-article-hook which is normally
set to (gnus-summary-mark-unread-as-read).  I defined my own function
for this:

(defun kai-gnus-mark-article-hook ()
  (if (and (not (or (memq gnus-current-article gnus-newsgroup-marked)
		    (memq gnus-current-article gnus-newsgroup-dormant)
		    (memq gnus-current-article gnus-newsgroup-expirable)
		    (memq gnus-current-article gnus-newsgroup-ancient)
                    (memq gnus-current-article gnus-newsgroup-reads))))
      (if (kai-gnus-newsgroup-style-group gnus-newsgroup-name)
	  (gnus-summary-mark-unread-as-read)
	(gnus-summary-mark-as-dormant 1))))

I enabled this function with:

(setq gnus-mark-article-hook (list 'kai-gnus-mark-article-hook))

Now, what does kai-gnus-mark-article-hook do?  Well, it does not do
anything if the article is alread ticked or dormant or expirable or
ancient or read.  But if the article is fresh, it sees whether the
current group is a `newsgroup style group'.  If so, the article is
marked as read (as is normal in a newsgroup).  Else, the article is
marked as dormant.  (Of course, you can replace
gnus-summary-mark-as-dormant with gnus-summary-mark-as-unread-forward
to tick the message.)

What's missing?  Well, the function kai-gnus-newsgroup-style-group
which checks whether a group is a newsgroup style group.  Here's a
simple version:

(defun kai-gnus-newsgroup-style-group (groupname)
  (if (string-match "^nnml:" groupname)
      nil
    t))

It considers all nnml groups to be mail style, all others to be
newsgroup style.  Suppose you wish to treat mailing lists like
newsgroups, and further suppose your mailing list groups are called
"nnml:list.foo", then you could use the following definition:

(defun kai-gnus-newsgroup-style-group (groupname)
  (cond ((string-match "^nnml:list" groupname) t)
        ((string-match "^nnml:" groupname) nil)
        (t t)))

kai
-- 
Life is hard and then you die.