bug#9244: 24.0.50; Server put offline without any prompt

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Occasionally an NNTP (or IMAP) server refuses to answer.
>> In Emacs-23, Gnus then prompted me something like "Unable to open
>> server foo, go offline? "
>> In Emacs-24, this has disappeared at the server is just marked offline
>> silently (maybe there's a warning message, but if so I never get to
>> notice it).
> Yes, it's marked "denied" if you can't open it.

It's set to `offline' here, not `denied'.

>> Can the prompting be re-introduced, please?
> No, the go-offline thing didn't make any sense in most situations.  The
> offline/online thing is a global Gnus thing, and if (say) your IMAP
> connection to Gmail fails, it makes no sense to put Gnus offline with
> respect to the other servers.

I totally agree and that's indeed the problem I have: Gnus does put my
IMAP connection in `offline' state where it shouldn't.

Actually for me the prompt made a lot of sense: sometimes the connection
failure was really just transient and I want Gnus to re-try connecting,
whereas at other times the connection fails for good reasons (e.g. it's
a server that I can only access from some places and not from others, or
only when the VPN is activated, or it is down for maintenance, ...) and
I want to mark it offline so it doesn't prevent me from accessing
other servers.


        Stefan