Re: gnus: link annoyance

["François Pinard" <pinard@iro.umontreal.ca>]

Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com> writes:

> I suspect however that my arguments are going to convince you just as
> much as your arguments have convinced me :-)

Hi, Nick.  You know, it always has been a pleasure corresponding with
you, and enjoying your respectful attitude.  In the case here, I'm not
so trying to convince you, than to alleviate a bit of my misery! :-)

> The question is how one deals with those unusual cases where you do
> want to revisit an article (or a mail message: to gnus they are the
> same thing).

Well, using Gnus interactively or through Emacs Lisp programming does
not have to be the same thing, programs may bend Gnus behaviour.

> You call it checking but you are really reading them: how exactly is org
> or gnus to know that even though you are reading the articles, you are
> not really reading them?

Org could tell Gnus that I am not really reading an article as if I was
using Gnus interactively.  When a user interactively created an Org link
to a Gnus article (likely using C-c l), (s)he decided at the time if the
article was to be left read, unread, ticked or otherwise.  The human
decision has been taken at the time the Org link was created.  When Org
later visits that link and triggers Gnus into displaying the article, it
could get Gnus to do nothing else then display it, keeping the prior
human decision unaltered, defeating a Gnus automatism that mainly make
sense when reading interactively from Gnus (and not from Org), leaving
the responsibility to the user to explicitly change the prior human
decision if this is then deemed appropriate.

> the links in the org file [to previously read articles] still work.

Which is wonderful, indeed.  I can read an article, leave it "read", and
still save a working Org link on a article who disappeared out of sight.

> In any case, you must have read the article in order to determine that
> you want to save a link to it. Then following the link does not change
> the flags: it was read before, it's still read after.

Exactly! :-) Your last sentence summarizes all of my desires!  But I
would complete it, just to make sure it extremely clear:

   Then following the link does not change the flags: it was read
   before, it's still read after; it was unread before, it's still
   unread after.

Hoping that you forgive my friendly tease!  Keep happy!

François