tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) (01/21/89)
(Hmm ... I like to have gnus-novice-user set to t because it prompts
for group and subject, but what is the default value of gnu doing in
distribution? Where is gnu? (I've only been using for local posting
previous to this.))
The scenario:
GNU Emacs 18.50.2 of Sun Oct 30 1988 on imagine.pawl.rpi.edu
(berkeley-unix)
We just moved our news spool directories from imagine to rpi.edu.
I am using NNTP access to there. When I had been using rn, I removed
a large number of groups which I never saw myself even referencing;
others hung around. That is, alt.flame got removed from my .newsrc
but comp.lang.c remained (unsubscribed).
I am completely unfamiliar with the syntax to options -n.
What happened:
I ran gnus; things acted exactly as they should have but at first I
thought it was freaking out from me and coming to eat my brains. From
what I could see of the messages flashing by it was subscribing me to
all sorts of groups with funky arpa.*, mail.*, comp.lang.* and so on
names. Groups of which I never even heard.
Now, why I am writing:
I rather like -some- aspects of what happened. Through it I happened
to find arpa.kcl and a couple of other groups I would like to
participate in. Mostly I just had my .newsrc increase on me over
fourfold (two times the original size plus the .newsrc-rpi.edu.el
file) (oh yes, and a .newsrc-rpi.edu~ file of which I do not
understand it's existence -- make-backup-files is nil -- any way to
help that?).
The problems are that a) I am trying to convince people, mostly those
not familiar with GNU Emacs (the ones that are familiar with it don't
need much convincing :-) to use GNUS. Actually, they can use whatever
they like, but I would take some sort of unnatural pride in my life if
they happened to get converted to GNU and GNUS because of me. The
other problem is b) filespace is a concern.
Problem (a) is not so much a problem with my salesmanship but one of
people around here whining when something peculiar happens with their
.newsrc. I can only smooth out their ruffled feathers so much ...
I dug into the source and unearthed gnus-add-new-newsgroup, which is
doing the work of adding new groups when they appear. All in all, it
does a wonderful job. Tons better than rn ... rn virtually never told
me when a newgroup was in the active list. Unfotunately, though, it
is very much an internal function with no real user-interfacing, save
for messages telling you about all the groups which it is adding to
your .newsrc. I think there is a better way of doing this, but I
don't have the time at the moment to learn the internals of gnus and
how the file manipulation is being done, etcetera. What would be
optimal is to have a user-variable that could be initialized in
gnus-Startup-hook which would just (pseudo-code):
(cond
((eq gnus-new-newsgroup 'options)
(if (y-or-n-p "Add? ")
(gnus-add-newsgroup-subscribe)
(gnus-add-newsgroup-to-options)))
(gnus-new-newsgroup
(if (y-or-n-p "Add? ")
(gnus-add-newsgroup-subscribe)
(gnus-add-newsgroup-unsubscribe)))
(t
(gnus-add-newsgroup-subscribe)))
Yes, it could be organized better, but it was just some pseudo-code.
It could also let me know if a newgroup shows up that is canceled by
options -n (which I don't fully understand, remember) but I might
still be interested in. Say, for example, that I had !talk, but
talk.emacs was created. I'd like to know about it. This starts
mucking with timestamps on files though.
I have a few other comments coming through on another message. It is
just that I expected this one to be long, so I sent it seperately.
Dave
--
tale@rpitsmts.bitnet, tale%mts@rpitsgw.rpi.edu, tale@pawl.rpi.eduumerin@photon.stars.flab.fujitsu.junet (Masanobu UMEDA) (01/26/89)
Date: 21 Jan 89 06:18:55 GMT From: flab!fgw!uunet!pawl.rpi.edu!tale (David C Lawrence) Organization: The Octagon Room I ran gnus; things acted exactly as they should have but at first I thought it was freaking out from me and coming to eat my brains. From what I could see of the messages flashing by it was subscribing me to all sorts of groups with funky arpa.*, mail.*, comp.lang.* and so on names. Groups of which I never even heard. One easy solution is to unsubscribe them using "u" command if you don't like to see them in Newsgroup buffer. The other solution is to prevent being added automatically using options line in .newsrc file. "options -n !comp" means comp.* must be ignored when checking new newsgroups. If you don't want to be added comp.* any more, put this options line in your .newsrc. file. After that, you can remove unnecessary newsgroups in that file. "options -n !comp comp.sys" means comp.* must be ignored except for comp.sys.* when checking new newsgroups. If you want to be added new newsgroups under comp.sys hierarchy, use this options line. Masanobu UMEDA umerin@flab.Fujitsu.JUNET umerin%flab.Fujitsu.JUNET@uunet.uu.NET