Getting/setting group parameters/info from backends.

[visigoth@naiad.fac.cs.cmu.edu]

So--I've been poking around, and there doesn't seem to be any sort of
reasonable interface to perform this function.  (Well--this isn't
entirely true.  We have the nnchoke-request-update-info function that
I'm going to make use in nnimap, but I've looked at what gets done,
and it's not good enough.  It's good from the point of view of Gnus
retrieving information from back-ends.  It does that just fine.  But
when my nnimap code needs to know the base-uid chunk of information,
or set it, Gnus isn't calling the update-info function.

So--what I'd like to find is some method for a back-end to ask for
and/or manipulate the group info at any point it wants to.
Specifically, if that's a problem, I need access to read group-info
-before- Gnus does an nnimap-request-group, because I need to have
that number to calculate the results.

If at all possible, it would be nice to also shove data into that
location when it is available, rather than waiting for the next time
Gnus thinks to ask.

I'm not sure exactly how this should work.  When a back-end asks for
information, it somehow has to identify exactly the group it's asking
for.  What if two servers on one backend have the same group name?
Can you have multiple servers connecting to one machine?  Perhaps this
is somehow related to group parameters.  In any case, I'm unsure how
to explicitly let Gnus know who I am.

The list appears to be down for now--but I look forward to input when
it comes back up.  I'm very happy to have nnimap working at all, but
it's only most of the way there.  Without UID stuff, things could get
very icky.

I'm off to bed now.  I expect when I get back to my code I'll have
nnimap work with its own group->UID mappings, and maybe save it
separately.

John.