Re: [OT] retrieving old messages [WAS] Re: [Babel] Handling of errors when using Ledger

[Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org>]

Dan Davison <dandavison7@gmail.com> writes:

> Bernt Hansen <bernt@norang.ca> writes:
>
>> Dan <dandavison7@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Incidentally, can any gnus users tell me -- is there a non-painful way of
>>> retrieving an old message from nntp in order to create a reply in the correct
>>> thread? Or do you hack the headers to make it appear in the right thread? I'm
>>> using the gmane web interface to send this.
>>
>> I read the list through gnus and gmane.  When I'm in the summary buffer
>> for the org-mode list I can retrieve old messages with
>>
>>    / O 500 RET
>>
>> to get the last 500 messages from the list.
>
> Thanks Bernt and Seb, but that was the route I was referring to when I
> said "painful" :) The list volume is quite high, and retrieving
> thousands of messages takes a while. And of course you go for 1500 and
> it turns out to be message 1728...
>
> It seems a rather primitive practice, can we really not do better? Is it
> not possible to use a unique identifier to pull down a specific message?
> (I was not reading usenet or whatever it was called in the 1980s; I
> don't really know anything about these technologies.)

FWIW, recent changes nnir (in nognus and development Emacs) allow for
easy searching of individual Gmane groups. Simply type "G G" on the
org-mode group in the in the Group buffer or call
gnus-group-make-nnir-group from within the summary buffer or an article.
I typed M-x gnus-group-make-nnir-group while editing this message,
entered "gnus painful" and received the following summary buffer
(limited to the org-mode list) in less than a second:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
 . 27-Sep: Bernt Hansen     - [85: gmane.emacs.orgmode/3394] Wish list: Storing links and enabling MIME actions on files
 . 27-Sep: Carsten Dominik  \-> [83: gmane.emacs.orgmode/3400] Re: Wish list: Storing links and enabling MIME actions on files
 . 03-Oct: Bernt Hansen     - [80: gmane.emacs.orgmode/3559] Intermittent Font Face problem
 . 25-Apr: Chao Lu          - [89: gmane.emacs.orgmode/24512] Edit Worg, Tracking changes, ect.
 . 29-Apr: David Frascone   - [91: gmane.emacs.orgmode/24740] Re: Re: Linking Mail ?
 . 29-Apr: Matt Lundin      +-> [94: gmane.emacs.orgmode/24746] Re: Linking Mail ?
 . 29-Apr: David Frascone   | \-> [91: gmane.emacs.orgmode/24749] Re: Linking Mail ?
 . 29-Apr: Rémi Vanicat     |   +-> [87: gmane.emacs.orgmode/24777] Re: Linking Mail ?
 . 30-Apr: David Maus       |   \-> [89: gmane.emacs.orgmode/24793] Re: Re: Linking Mail ?
 . 30-Apr: Uday S Reddy     \-> [82: gmane.emacs.orgmode/24826] Re: Linking Mail ?
 . 29-Sep: Matt Lundin      - [54: gmane.emacs.orgmode/31143] Re: Having (too) many files in org-agenda-files
 . 25-Nov: Dan              - [60: gmane.emacs.orgmode/34047] Re: [Babel] Handling of errors when using Ledger
 . 25-Nov: Bernt Hansen     +-> [88: gmane.emacs.orgmode/34055] Re: [Babel] Handling of errors when using Ledger
 . 25-Nov: Dan Davison      | +-> [91: gmane.emacs.orgmode/34057] [OT] retrieving old messages [WAS] Re: [Babel] Handling of errors when using Ledger
 . 25-Nov: Bernt Hansen     | | \-> [100: gmane.emacs.orgmode/34065] Re: [OT] retrieving old messages
 . 25-Nov: Sébastien Vauba  | \-> [86: gmane.emacs.orgmode/34059] Re: [Babel] Handling of errors when using Ledger
 . 25-Nov: Sébastien Vauba  \-> [88: gmane.emacs.orgmode/34056] Re: [Babel] Handling of errors when using Ledger
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

You can reply directly to any of these articles or type A T to recover
the full thread in the Gmane group.

If your search is too broad (i.e.,., hundreds of results) and you choose
to display all of the results at once, nnir can take a bit of time. I'm
not sure it's any more painful than wading through web search results on
gmane, though. ;)

Best,
Matt