Re: gnus scoring insanity

[Adam Sjøgren]

On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:13:03 -0600, notbob@bb.nothome.com wrote:

> What's the deal with scoring for newsgroups?

It seems it is the same deal as with all the other things you are
complaining about.

I use scoring very simply: To not see articles from people I've becomed
tired of.

To this purpose, I have a single file, called ~/News/all.SCORE, which
contains this¹:

  (
   ("from"
    ("Someone I Do Not Care To Read At All <someone@example.com>" -10000 nil e)
    ("Someone I Just Want To Skip Most Of The Time <someoneelse@example.com>" 
-5000 nil e))
  )

So, what does this tell Gnus?

If the from-line matches "Someone I Do Not Care To Read At All
<someone@example.com>" exactly, lower the score by 10000. This means
that I will never see the article (because I've set the variable
gnus-summary-expunge-below to -9999.) 

If it exactly matches "Someone I Just Want To Skip Most Of The Time
<someoneelse@example.com>", the score is lowered by 5000, and the
article is showed less prominently and skipped when I ask for the next
unread article.

There is a quite thorough example and explanation of the format in the
manual:

 * http://gnus.org/manual/gnus_266.html#SEC266

But I guess that was in the half you skipped.

> "The current score file is by default the group's local score file,
> even if no such score file actually exists. To insert score commands
> into some other score file (e.g. `all.SCORE'), you must first make
> this score file the current one."

> Huh!?  Can we please speak-a da English?

Which part of that paragraph is unclear to you?

(Not all Gnus users and developers are native english speakers, so
please do excuse us, and suggest improvements to the language.)

> Where are the score files?

In ~/News/, unless you ask Gnus to put them somewhere else (by setting
gnus-kill-files-directory²).

> How many score files are there?

As many as you'd like. More than number of newsgroups+1 may be silly,
though. I only have ~/News/all.SCORE, but my scoring needs are very low.

> For some reason these subjects seem to be of no consequence.

They were probably obvious to the author at the time.

> What is an alist?

They are close to what is also called "dictionaries" or "hashes" in
other languages (Python, Perl).

> I googled for alist and got a reference to it in the Emacs Lisp
> Manual. Why is it there?

In the Emacs Lisp Manual? Because it is one of the concepts used in
Emacs Lisp?

> I haven't a clue on how to write lisp code yet.

It isn't required beforehand knowledge, but it's hard not to pick up a
little along the way... :-)

> Geez, gnus is hard enough.  Could it be made any harder by talking in
> circles and using proprietary terms without defining them?

Which terms are the ones you consider 'proprietary'?!


  Best regards,

    Adam


¹ Abbreviated for pedagogical purposes
² http://gnus.org/manual/gnus_265.html#SEC265

-- 
 "They were trying to make me an insider to some kind         Adam Sjøgren
  of trip they were on. I don't think so."               asjo@koldfront.dk