difference between foreign and secondary servers?

[Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann)]

Helmut points out the following from the Gnus info file:

   Servers and Methods
   -------------------

      Wherever you would normally use a select method (e.g.
   `gnus-secondary-select-method', in the group select method, when
   browsing a foreign server) you can use a virtual server name instead.
   This could potentially save lots of typing.  And it's nice all over.

He interprets this to mean that he can add servers in the server
buffer, and then

(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '("foo" "bar" "baz"))

Or maybe this:

(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '("nnml:foo" "nnfolder:bar" "nnml:baz"))

Until now, I thought the only difference between secondary and foreign
servers was that the former are mentioned in
gnus-secondary-select-methods.  When one puts the whole server
definition (parameters and all) into gnus-secondary-select-methods,
you can see where the difference is -- you can frob the
gnus-secondary-select-methods nicely from Lisp code in site-start.el
or something, which is not possible for the foreign servers.

But Helmut doesn't do this.  In fact, the info file even suggests it.
So, where is the difference between secondary and foreign servers?
There must be more to it than just that the secondary servers are
mentioned in gnus-secondary-select-methods!

Ideas?

kai
-- 
I like BOTH kinds of music.