Re: gnus/nnimap behaviour in case of failed fetch operations

[those who know me have no need of my name <not-a-real-address@usa.net>]

in gnu.emacs.gnus i read:

>those who know me have no need of my name <not-a-real-address@usa.net>
>writes:
>> in gnu.emacs.gnus i read:

>>>Gnus marks non-existings articles as read.  This goes back to
>>>nntp, where it is not uncommon for the server to forget an article for
>>>some reason or other.  Gnus regards it as non-existing and moves on.
>>
>> and is unfortunately inappropriate behavior, sometimes.
>
>What would a better behaviour be?  I can't really see anything else to
>do.  Retrieving the article didn't work, so the article doesn't exist.

i'm not sure what would be better, in the context of gnus, but the article
may yet appear.  server farms often experience this sort of thing, and
other newsreaders have made allowances for it (i.e., agent's `server
creates articles out of order' setting); overview records can be available
or article numbers consumed before the article itself is available.  the
same sort of behavior cannot (or at least should not) happen to imap
servers, but the root of the problem is how gnus reacts not how nnimap
reacts.

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