Re: That backup thing...

[Justin Sheehy <dworkin@ccs.neu.edu>]

Norman Walsh <norm@berkshire.net> writes:

> That said, I get the distinct impression that I'm going to have to
> be a little more careful with nnml than I was with nnmh.

Yes.  Very much.

>   ("emacs.ding" 3 ((1 . 232)) ((reply 195 203) 
>      (tick (1 . 8) 152 168 195 197 205 208)))

It means:
   the group name is "emacs.ding"
   the group level is 3.
   articles 1 through 232 have been read
   articles 195 and 203 have been replied to (are marked replied)
   messages 1-8,152,168,195,197,205,208 have been marked with a '!'

> >From which I gather that "emacs.ding" (~/Mail/emacs/ding/*) contains
> messages numbered from 1 to 232 and that messages 1 to 8, 152, 168,
> 195, 197, 205, and 208 are marked as "undeleted".  All the rest I can
> backup and rm (if they meet my other criteria).  The "(reply ...)" 
> field is pretty obvious, but what does "3" mean after emacs.ding?
> Are there other things that might occur in this list?

It does not mean that the group contains articles 1-232.  The active
file holds that info.

The last field here, 'tick', is one way of marking articles explicitly
unread (not undeleted, as there is no such concept in Gnus).  There
are other marks that also mean 'unread', and also articles not in the
range 1-232 are not read.

the 3 is the group level.  Groups that you read generally have a level
somewhere from 1 to 5.

> Next, in ~/Mail/emacs/ding/.overview I see one line per message.  I assume
> if I delete ~/Mail/emacs/ding/9, I should delete the line that begins
> /^9\t/ from .overview as well.

Yes.

> Finally, I see in ~/Mail/active:
> 
>   emacs.ding 232 1 y
> 
> What does this mean?  And what other things might it say?

It means that the low-water-mark and high-water-mark in the group
"emacs.ding" are 1 and 232.  From this, Gnus knows that all articles
in this group have numbers between these values (inclusive).  There
may not be this many articles, as article 100 (for example) may be
expired before article 232.

-Justin