a strategy for reading newsgroups

a strategy for reading newsgroups

[prad]

do people have efficient strategies for handling newsgroups?
are there any links that pertain specifically to gnus?

here is one issue for instance that is bothering me and haven't found a
solution for in the excellent and humorously written manual, yet.

when i go into a newsgroup there may be 9999 posts. they are all unread
and i'm asked how many do i want to download. so i say 99 and read a few
and may be reply to a few or post some of my own.

now i go back to the group and it would be nice to see new replies to my
efforts or the threads i was involved in. however, i'm asked how many do
i want to download and i see the new items again some of which are of
course the ones i'm interested in. 

i suppose the marking and prioritizing threads can assist here, but i'm
also thinking that if i could mark an entire group as read, then i'd
only get new posts when i go in, so that's a lot less to sift
through. (i can mark a group with #, but haven't figured out how to mark
everything within it as being read). possibly, this may not be a good
idea either or there may be more intelligent ways of doing things.

is there some sort of gnus for dummies that is available?

--
In friendship,
prad

                                      ... with you on your journey
Towards Freedom
http://www.towardsfreedom.com (website)
Information, Inspiration, Imagination - truly a site for soaring I's

Re: a strategy for reading newsgroups

[prad]

prad <prad@towardsfreedom.com> writes:

> is there some sort of gnus for dummies that is available?
>
here are a couple of links that i've been finding useful so far:

the faq that's on gnu.org for gnus:
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/Frequently-Asked-Questions.html#Frequently-Asked-Questions

sacha's page on gnus which provides several interesting ideas:
http://sachachua.com/notebook/wickedcool/wc-emacs-05-gnus.html

-- 
in friendship,
prad

Re: a strategy for reading newsgroups

[Tassilo Horn]

Massimo Gengarelli <gengarel@cs.unibo.it> writes:

Hi Massimo,

> While in the *Group* buffer, move your cursor over the newsgroup and
> press M-c c, then answer "y" at the question. Voilà, newsgroup marked
> as read.

Why do you clear the group data (`M-c') before catching up (`c')?  Only
the latter is needed.

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: a strategy for reading newsgroups

[prad]

Massimo Gengarelli <gengarel@cs.unibo.it> writes:

> While in the *Group* buffer, move your cursor over the newsgroup and
> press M-c c, then answer "y" at the question. Voilà, newsgroup marked as
> read.
>
many thx massimo - for this as well as the info about how and why the
author shows up the way it does earlier.

newsgroups certainly require a different way of thinking about how to do
things than forums - like when you're asked how many items to download
when you go into a group ... i just never know. :D

also, i haven't figured out how to search effectively in a newsgroup
(with gnus or claws-mail). on the web, i can just go to the search box
the newsgroup provides, but here i'm not sure what to do, yet. there is
likely some mechanism to archive and create indices - mairix possibly
though the manual seems to indicate it's for email.

anyway, time to go study the manual!

-- 
In friendship,
prad

Re: a strategy for reading newsgroups

[Massimo Gengarelli]

prad <prad@towardsfreedom.com> writes:
> i suppose the marking and prioritizing threads can assist here, but i'm
> also thinking that if i could mark an entire group as read, then i'd

While in the *Group* buffer, move your cursor over the newsgroup and
press M-c c, then answer "y" at the question. Voilà, newsgroup marked as
read.

enjoy =)
 massi