Number of read messages in gnus-group-line-format?

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

My boss wishes to see the number of old messages in each group.  He
uses some groups as a todo list.  Important todo items are ticked,
less important ones are just marked as read.  Seeing the number of old
messages in all his groups would quickly allow him to identify where
old things are to be done.

It seems that %R doesn't cut it because that one counts expirable
messages, too.  So I added an entry in gnus-group-line-format-alist
which provides for %x which takes the same number as %R but substracts
the expirable and dormant and ticked messages from it.

But that was too simple-minded an approach: it doesn't take possible
holes into account.

Do you have any idea what could be done about this?

One idea that crossed my mind would be to provide a function which
marks newly read messages as dormant (rather than read).  The number
of dormant messages in a group can be shown in the Group buffer.
(Maybe he should be switching to total-expire, too, since no messages
should be marked as read anyway.)

I'm not sure this is a good approach, though.  And going through all
old groups and marking as dormant all messages marked as read is going
to be a chore :-(

kai
-- 
I like BOTH kinds of music.