Re: How to maintain newsrc.eld clean and tidy

Dilip wrote:

> The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
> that has been posted to gmane.emacs.gnus.general as well.
>
> Hi gnus!
>
> Gnus saves the state of reading into ~gnus-newsrc-alist~ as in elisp
> data form.
>
> When I read all messages from a group, I would expect the data form to
> shrink or minimize, but I still see long form of data for that group.
> Note: By read everything, for old messages I run
> ~gnus-topic-catchup-articles~ (=c=) on group buffer
>
> Eg:
>
> #+begin_src emacs-lisp
> (setq gnus-newsrc-alist
>       '( ("nntp+news.gmane.io:gmane.comp.gnu.guix.user" 3 ((1 . 18968))
>           ((unexist) (seen (1 . 18968))) "nntp:news.gmane.io") ))
> #+end_src
>
> ^ I'd expect this form to show that all have been read from 1-18968.
>
> But actually it saves data in session wise based on what were read.
>
> #+begin_src emacs-lisp
> (setq gnus-newsrc-alist
>       '( ("nntp+news.gmane.io:gmane.comp.gnu.guix.user" 3 ((1 . 18968))
>           ((unexist) (seen (18957 . 18968) (18937 . 18944) (18912 . 18920) ........)) "nntp:news.gmane.io") ))
> #+end_src
>
> ^ But it looks this way. Which create very long lines.
>
> May I know the significance of this form? Why can't it be simple?
>
> After searching up a bit, I notice that =gnus-topic-alist= and
> =gnus-topic-topology= and be easily maintained manually by config.
>
> So may I get some tips to maintain newsrc file clean and in version
> control. As I do want to sync with phone (android emacs app) to read
> as well.
> Basically I'm expecting to want that =gnus-newsrc-alist= (hash-table)
> to be simple in a way that only reports
>
> #+begin_src text
> ("news...." 3 ((1 . 100)) ((unexist) (seen (1 . 10))))
> #+end_src
>
> and not splits of =(1 . 2) (3 . 4) (5 . 10)= for very long lines.

Simple: add a -request-compact-group back-end function for nntp. :-)

> Thank you for taking time to read this.

No problem.

Regards,
James