agent/imap offline reading

agent/imap offline reading

[Danny Siu]

The recent agent/cache unification really speeds up the IMAP mail reading
experience!  Kudos to Simon and folks!

With that, I was trying to use agent for the very first time.  I have
agentized my imap mail sources ('J a' in server buffer), created a 'all'
catagory ('J c') with predicate set to 'true', and have added groups ('J a'
in group buffer) that I want to do offline reading to the 'all' catagory.

However, when I am in offline mode, entering groups that belongs to 'all'
catagory still shows articles marked with '@', even after I do 'J s' or 'J
u'.  Anyone know why is that?  

From reading the Agent section of the manual, I thought catagory with 'true'
as predicate would always download all articles for offline reading.  Does it
have to do with the fact that my groups are IMAP groups?

Thanks,
-- 
Danny Siu

Re: agent/imap offline reading

[Simon Josefsson]

Danny Siu <dsiu@adobe.com> writes:

> The recent agent/cache unification really speeds up the IMAP mail reading
> experience!  Kudos to Simon and folks!
>
> With that, I was trying to use agent for the very first time.  I have
> agentized my imap mail sources ('J a' in server buffer), created a 'all'
> catagory ('J c') with predicate set to 'true', and have added groups ('J a'
> in group buffer) that I want to do offline reading to the 'all' catagory.
>
> However, when I am in offline mode, entering groups that belongs to 'all'
> catagory still shows articles marked with '@', even after I do 'J s' or 'J
> u'.  Anyone know why is that?  
>
> From reading the Agent section of the manual, I thought catagory with 'true'
> as predicate would always download all articles for offline reading.  Does it
> have to do with the fact that my groups are IMAP groups?

Was the article already marked as read?

The agent currently has some hard coded default to not download
already read articles.  I wrote a patch long time ago (posted here)
that added a `read' Agent predicate to fix this, but that isn't
backwards compatible and means everyone has to change agent
predicates, which isn't good, so I'm not sure if it can be added.

Re: agent/imap offline reading

[Kai Großjohann]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> The agent currently has some hard coded default to not download
> already read articles.  I wrote a patch long time ago (posted here)
> that added a `read' Agent predicate to fix this, but that isn't
> backwards compatible and means everyone has to change agent
> predicates, which isn't good, so I'm not sure if it can be added.

Can it be made backwards-compatible?  Can't you make it so that by
default, read articles are not downloaded, like now?  Then people can
frob their agent predicates to also download read articles.

Or am I missing something obvious?

kai
-- 
A large number of young women don't trust men with beards.  (BFBS Radio)

Re: agent/imap offline reading

[Simon Josefsson]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
>
>> The agent currently has some hard coded default to not download
>> already read articles.  I wrote a patch long time ago (posted here)
>> that added a `read' Agent predicate to fix this, but that isn't
>> backwards compatible and means everyone has to change agent
>> predicates, which isn't good, so I'm not sure if it can be added.
>
> Can it be made backwards-compatible?  Can't you make it so that by
> default, read articles are not downloaded, like now?  Then people can
> frob their agent predicates to also download read articles.

The default value is stored in the agent predicate file, so if we
change the default the old default will still be in people's agent
predicate file.  So people with old agent predicate files that upgrade
to new gnus will start to download read articles.  The upgrade
procedure could contain a step that wraps all old predicates in a (and
read ,@OLD) but it isn't nice to do that without telling the user.
And what if the user later downgrades?  I'm not sure what Gnus does
given an unknown predicate.

But I guess it isn't impossible to fix.

Re: agent/imap offline reading

[Kai Großjohann]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> The default value is stored in the agent predicate file, so if we
> change the default the old default will still be in people's agent
> predicate file.  So people with old agent predicate files that upgrade
> to new gnus will start to download read articles.  The upgrade
> procedure could contain a step that wraps all old predicates in a (and
> read ,@OLD) but it isn't nice to do that without telling the user.
> And what if the user later downgrades?  I'm not sure what Gnus does
> given an unknown predicate.

Hm.  Can you make it so that predicates which do not refer to "read"
behave the same as now (only unread articles fulfill the predicate),
and that people have to do something to get the read articles, too?

Hm.  Lessee.  An agent predicate is a boolean combination of
conditions which is applied to each article, I guess.  Hm.  There it
is quite counterintuitive to specify such things.  Whee.

If the predicate does not contain the symbol `read' you could
interpret it as before, only if `read' is in there do you use the new
interpretation.  This is really ugly, though.

kai
-- 
A large number of young women don't trust men with beards.  (BFBS Radio)

Re: agent/imap offline reading

[Danny Siu]

no.  unread articles (ticked, dormant, or unmarked ' ') (verified by viewing
using other IMAP clients, mozilla, as unread) are not downloaded by agent
either.  in other words, no articles were downloaded with 'J u' even with
groups belong to catagory with (true) as predicates.

where should i edebug for more info?

thanks,

Simon Josefsson writes:

  Simon> Was the article already marked as read?

  Simon> The agent currently has some hard coded default to not download
  Simon> already read articles.  I wrote a patch long time ago (posted here)
  Simon> that added a `read' Agent predicate to fix this, but that isn't
  Simon> backwards compatible and means everyone has to change agent
  Simon> predicates, which isn't good, so I'm not sure if it can be added.


-- 
Danny Siu

Re: agent/imap offline reading

[Simon Josefsson]

Danny Siu <dsiu@adobe.com> writes:

> no.  unread articles (ticked, dormant, or unmarked ' ') (verified by viewing
> using other IMAP clients, mozilla, as unread) are not downloaded by agent
> either.  in other words, no articles were downloaded with 'J u' even with
> groups belong to catagory with (true) as predicates.

Is anything downloaded in the group at all?

> where should i edebug for more info?

gnus-agent-fetch-group-1 is a starting point.

Re: agent/imap offline reading

[Danny Siu]

Simon Josefsson writes:
  Simon> Is anything downloaded in the group at all?

Well.  Yes.  The first time I do 'J s' after removing the agent dir,
articles are being downloaded.  but subsequent 'J u' or 'J s' don't do a
thing.

  Simon> gnus-agent-fetch-group-1 is a starting point.

Thanks.  I will look into it.

-- 
Danny Siu

Re: agent/imap offline reading

[Danny Siu]

I finally found out the cause of the problem.  My previous setting has
gnus-save-score set to t and all scores of articles are therefore stored in
.newsrc.eld.

This is what breaks agent.  Somehow agent create .agentview files with bogus
articles ranges and status for the groups with scores stored in .newsrc.eld.

After setting gnus-save-score to nil and MANUALLY removing all scores in
.newsrc.eld, agent is working as expected (downloading all unread messages
in selected groups)


Simon Josefsson writes:

  Simon> Danny Siu <dsiu@adobe.com> writes:
  >> no.  unread articles (ticked, dormant, or unmarked ' ') (verified by
  >> viewing using other IMAP clients, mozilla, as unread) are not
  >> downloaded by agent either.  in other words, no articles were
  >> downloaded with 'J u' even with groups belong to catagory with (true)
  >> as predicates.

  Simon> Is anything downloaded in the group at all?

  >> where should i edebug for more info?

  Simon> gnus-agent-fetch-group-1 is a starting point.

-- 
Danny Siu