Re: Patch Series: Warping via the registry

[Andy Moreton <andrewjmoreton@gmail.com>]

On Tue 11 Oct 2011, Dave Abrahams wrote:

> on Mon Oct 10 2011, Andy Moreton <andrewjmoreton-AT-gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun 09 Oct 2011, Dave Abrahams wrote:
>>
>>> This patch series implements the ability to warp to a message via
>>> information stored in the Gnus registry.  From a user's point-of-view,
>>> this means that articles brought in from other groups by
>>> gnus-*-refer-* can be used as a jumping-off-point for further
>>> references.
>>
>> You have invented yet another term to confuse gnus users in this patch
>> series, but have not defined what "warp" means.
>
> If you're complaining about the term "warp," I didn't invent it (and
> probably wouldn't have thought of a term that cute).
>
> ,----[ (info "(gnus)Basic Usage") ]
> |    The `nnir' group made in this way is an `ephemeral' group, and some
> | changes are not permanent: aside from reading, moving, and deleting,
> | you can't act on the original article. But there is an alternative: you
> | can _warp_ to the original group for the article on the current line
> | with `A W', aka `gnus-warp-to-article'. Even better, the function
> | `gnus-summary-refer-thread', bound by default in summary buffers to `A
> | T', will first warp to the original group before it works its magic and
> | includes all the articles in the thread. From here you can read, move
> | and delete articles, but also copy them, alter article marks, whatever.
> | Go nuts.
> `----

Ahh, I see. Another part of manual which uses terms without defining
them adequately...

>> Please add some documentation to explain the use of this new feature. If
>> you can do so *without* defining new terminology, all the better.
>
> I can do some explaining here, but I'm afraid it wouldn't fit into the
> manual as is.  I hope this will be helpful.

I wasn't making any judgement on the quality or utility of your patch -
merely trying to nudge you towards also patching the manual :-)

> This patch series makes it possible to initiate a warp from any group,
> which in turn makes it possible to follow threads starting from
> ephemeral groups other than an nnir group.
>
> Why would you want to do that?  The `gnus-goto-article' function I
> posted in the series' introductory email allows me, given just a
> Message-ID, to jump into a buffer containing that message, regardless of
> which group or server the message came from (set up
> gnus-refer-article-method to enable that).  That's awesomely powerful,
> but without the patch series, I can't get from that article to its
> entire thread.  With the patch series, I can, because gnus will warp me
> to the group from which gnus-summary-refer-article plucked it.
>
> If you want to know why I want to fetch articles by Message-ID in the
> first place, it's because I store references to them in Org files, and
> need to be able to jump from the Org item to the message.

This sounds like a useful feature. Please try to add your explanation or
something similar to the manual, as it would make useful docuemntation.

     AndyM