Re: Make Gnus emit more errors for unknown servers?

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

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:
>
>>> The server should still be in gnus-server-alist, I think?  If it
>>> isn't, it should be put there.  Probably.
>>
>> I'm trying to suggest the opposite: when Gnus finds that a server is
>> missing, it should issue an error message.
>
> But wouldn't it be better if the server never went missing?

No.  If people make a mistake in changing their server configs, then
Gnus adding the old server back again doesn't really help so much.

For example, in the old days, the select method entry in .newsrc.eld
was (nnml "") for each nnml group.  Now changing
gnus-secondary-select-methods to add some parameter for the server
spec won't do useful things.

Now Gnus puts the string "nnml:" there rather than (nnml ""), so that
it works to change the server parameters in
gnus-secondary-select-methods.  This is one step in preventing
strange servers from appearing.

Do you see the point I'm trying to make?  The user tries to change
something about a server, but something happens so that Gnus does not
use the new server definition for some groups.  Then my opinion is
that Gnus should warn the user that something is wrong.  But the
current behavior for Gnus is that Gnus silently adds the `missing'
server.

>> There have been discussions in the past of people who see lots of
>> strange servers when they do `^'.  And even more strange problems
>> resulted from this.
>
> Well, it is valid in Gnus to just put arbitrary select methods as the
> servers of arbitrary groups.  This will result in strange servers in
> the server buffer.  Is that a problem?

I want Gnus to allow the user to create strange servers on purpose,
but I also want Gnus to help the user from accidentally creating
strange servers.

kai
-- 
Simplification good!  Oversimplification bad!  (Larry Wall)