Re: [gnus] Fetch only new news from last visit

[Emanuel Berg]

Diep Pham <favadi@fastmail.fm> writes:

> I'm trying to use gnus to read news from gmane.org.
> But it is quite confusing to use.
>
> I subscribed to a group, when I try to access the
> group, gnus ask me: "How many articles do you want
> to ...". I don't think fetch all news is good idea
> so I choose 100. I read all news and close gnus.
> When I open gnus and try to access the newsgroup
> again, gnus still ask me "How many articles do you
> want to ...". I enter 100 again and endup fetching
> older news than the last time I visit the group.
> So my question:
>
> * is there a way that can prevent fetching older
> than last visit? * is there a way to disable the
> prompt "How many ariticles ..." and just fetch all
> new news like a normal news reader?

There is a "dribble" file which will record everything
you do in a session. When you exit Gnus, Gnus will
write those changes to a newsrc file, so next time you
start Gnus you won't get the articles you already read
(the file is used to record other things as well).

You can follow this process by seeing how articles are
marked as read ("r") in the summary buffer when you
select them for reading.

When you add a new newsgroup, you can hit `c' for
`gnus-group-catchup-current' if you feel like 
starting with new posts only. What happens is the
exact same thing: "Mark all unread articles in the
current newsgroup as read.", as the help puts it.

Note that Gnus might not quit properly, i.e.
the newsrc file might not be updated, if you just shut
down Emacs, so be sure to exit Gnus the proper way
before you do. If you think this should be
automatized, there are many ways to do that; just ask
if need be.

As for disabling the question how many articles to
fetch, you can increase the value of, or set to nil,
the variable `gnus-large-newsgroup'. However, if you
get on with proper usage with read articles not
reappearing, typically this won't be a factor since
most (all?) newsgroups won't have 200 or more new
articles anyway (200 is the default value for
gnus-large-newsgroup). If you still want it, see the
help for that variable.

Good luck!

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573