Re: Question about nntp

[David Abrahams <dave@boostpro.com>]

I am having all the following problems.  Could someone please try to
address Matt's questions?

TIA

At Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:58:52 -0400, Matt Lundin wrote:
> 
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I know many people here read mail in Wanderlust and news in Gnus. If
> possible, however, I would like to try read nntp groups in Wanderlust.
> 
> One puzzle I have encountered is how to mark all items in an nntp
> group as read without having to update the entire group (i.e.,
> downloading all the headers). In Gnus, when subscribing to a new
> group, I generally hit "c" in order to mark all items as read. For
> instance, gmane.emacs.orgmode has over 16,000 articles. In gnus, I can
> mark these all as read without having to download the headers. That
> way, whenever I want to see, say, the last 1000 articles using "/ o" or
> the like, the earlier articles will appear in Gnus as read.
> 
> In Wanderlust, trying to mark all items as read forces an update. With
> the default settings, Wanderlust tries to download all 16,000+ headers
> (an expensive operation, one that often takes several minutes) just to
> mark them as read. If I choose to update only the 500 most recent
> headers, Wanderlust will "kill" the earlier articles, but it will not
> mark them as read. Let's say a little later I want to sync the folder
> using the range "all-entirely" in order to see the 1000 most recently
> articles. The 500 additional articles will appear as unread - which
> causes problems if I have not yet read the most recent new articles,
> since I then manually need to mark the older articles as read.
> 
> Such problems are compounded when filtering articles using virtual
> folders. As far as I can tell, creating ad-hoc virtual folders changes
> the the stored kill and sort state of the original folder, so when I
> reenter the folder, it is as if I am entering it for the first time.
> (I.e., I am prompted for the number of articles I want to see and they
> are sorted according to the default sort settings rather than the most
> recent sort state.) IMO such behavior makes it rather expensive (and
> slow) to do quick search queries of a group by subject, author, etc.
> (The comparison here is Gnus very fast "/ a" and "/ s" and "/ o"
> filters.)
> 
> 1) Is there a variable that instructs Wanderlust automatically to mark
> all killed items in a group as read (without having to update all
> headers)?
> 
> 2) Is there a way to make virtual filters temporary? I.e., is there a
> way to "pop" the previous state of a folder after running a filter?
> (similar to "/ w" in Gnus?) 
> 
> 3) Is there a way to specify a default number of "killed" articles for
> a group. That is, how can I instruct Wanderlust automatically to kill
> all but the most recent 200 articles when entering the folder?
> 
> Thanks in advance for your help, and my apologies if I've missed
> something obvious in the documentation.
> 
> Best,
> Matt
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
-- 
Dave Abrahams           Meet me at BoostCon: http://www.boostcon.com
BoostPro Computing
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