Re: gnus: link annoyance

[Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com>]

François Pinard <pinard@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> François Pinard <pinard@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>
>>> Whenever I visit a "gnus:" type link from Org, it has the side effect of
>>> "reading" the article in Gnus parlance, forcing me to "unread" it each
>>> time afterwards.
>
>> it's certainly not lost: the link continues to work, even if it points
>> to a read article; and visiting the group with C-u <SPACE> in gnus
>> also allows you to see previously read articles.
>
> Hi, Nick.
>
> Of course, you are fully right in that the article is still there, and
> likely unexpired.  But in practice, from my viewpoint, it is not there
> anymore: I do not usually enter groups by C-u SPC.  While possible, it
> is unusual that I want to find and read again an article which I once
> decided has been read for good.
>

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).

> If I search all mailgroups for a certain string, and randomly check
> hits, I do not want these articles I check to later have disappeared
> from sight in practice.  I was not really in the process of reading
> articles, but merely checking on them.

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?

>  It would not make sense that Org removes lines that I visit after a
> grep, and when grepping through many files, would they be Org,
> non-Org, mailboxes or articles in mailgroups, I am in a mode where I
> do not expect any kind of altering behaviour.
>

But it doesn't: the links in the org file still work. 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.

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