bug#63497: [PATCH] Remove obsolete information on archiving mail from Gnus manual

bug#63497: [PATCH] Remove obsolete information on archiving mail from Gnus manual

[Jens Schmidt via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

Hi,

my first test patch to practice things, pls comment if its format is not 
what you expect.  I hope Thunderbird does not mess up the format.  FSF 
copyright assignment is in process, but probably not yet completed.

Regardless of this being a test patch, it fixes a real but minor doc 
issue in the Gnus manual:  In 2012 Lars committed a change that removed 
the previous "external marks" feature  from various backends 
(89b163db286d79b43fb5c9927fc622bbf7d2ef1a).

The Gnus manual still references these external marks in section 
"Archiving Mails", I guess that reference just got overlooked.  But 
without external marks, archiving mails in Gnus is rather difficult (to 
my knowledge), at least for the nnml backend.  So I decided to rather 
remove that section entirely.

Thanks

Jens



* doc/misc/gnus.texi: Remove obsolete information on archiving mail from 
Gnus manual

---
  doc/misc/gnus.texi | 25 -------------------------
  1 file changed, 25 deletions(-)

diff --git a/doc/misc/gnus.texi b/doc/misc/gnus.texi
index be7504c92bf..e08a5587962 100644
--- a/doc/misc/gnus.texi
+++ b/doc/misc/gnus.texi
@@ -713,7 +713,6 @@ Top

  Browsing the Web

-* Archiving Mail::
  * Web Searches::                Creating groups from articles that 
match a string.
  * RSS::                         Reading RDF site summary.

@@ -17247,7 +17246,6 @@ Browsing the Web
  interfaces to these sources.

  @menu
-* Archiving Mail::
  * Web Searches::                Creating groups from articles that 
match a string.
  * RSS::                         Reading RDF site summary.
  @end menu
@@ -17264,29 +17262,6 @@ Browsing the Web
  Unplugged}) handle downloading articles, and then you can read them at
  leisure from your local disk.  No more World Wide Wait for you.

-@node Archiving Mail
-@subsection Archiving Mail
-@cindex archiving mail
-@cindex backup of mail
-
-Some of the back ends, notably @code{nnml}, @code{nnfolder}, and
-@code{nnmaildir}, now actually store the article marks with each group.
-For these servers, archiving and restoring a group while preserving
-marks is fairly simple.
-
-(Preserving the group level and group parameters as well still
-requires ritual dancing and sacrifices to the @file{.newsrc.eld} deity
-though.)
-
-To archive an entire @code{nnml}, @code{nnfolder}, or @code{nnmaildir}
-server, take a recursive copy of the server directory.  There is no need
-to shut down Gnus, so archiving may be invoked by @code{cron} or
-similar.  You restore the data by restoring the directory tree, and
-adding a server definition pointing to that directory in Gnus.  The
-@ref{Article Backlog}, @ref{Asynchronous Fetching} and other things
-might interfere with overwriting data, so you may want to shut down Gnus
-before you restore the data.
-
  @node Web Searches
  @subsection Web Searches
  @cindex nnweb
-- 
2.30.2

bug#63497: [PATCH] Remove obsolete information on archiving mail from Gnus manual

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sat, 13 May 2023 21:28:37 +0200
> From:  Jens Schmidt via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs,
>  the Swiss army knife of text editors" <bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> 
> my first test patch to practice things, pls comment if its format is not 
> what you expect.  I hope Thunderbird does not mess up the format.  FSF 
> copyright assignment is in process, but probably not yet completed.

It's not.

> Regardless of this being a test patch, it fixes a real but minor doc 
> issue in the Gnus manual:  In 2012 Lars committed a change that removed 
> the previous "external marks" feature  from various backends 
> (89b163db286d79b43fb5c9927fc622bbf7d2ef1a).
> 
> The Gnus manual still references these external marks in section 
> "Archiving Mails", I guess that reference just got overlooked.  But 
> without external marks, archiving mails in Gnus is rather difficult (to 
> my knowledge), at least for the nnml backend.  So I decided to rather 
> remove that section entirely.

Andrew, should these parts be removed, indeed?

> * doc/misc/gnus.texi: Remove obsolete information on archiving mail from 
> Gnus manual

Please mention the names of the nodes in which you make the changes,
as if they were functions.  (Using the Emacs commands for generating
ChangeLog-style entries would automatically include those node names
for you, so it is recommended to use those commands.)

Also, once you know the bug number (which usually happens when you
submit the second version of the patch and all the subsequent
versions), please mention the bug number in the commit log message.
You can see examples of that if you type "git log" in the Emacs
repository.

Thanks.

bug#63497: [PATCH] Remove obsolete information on archiving mail from Gnus manual

[Andrew Cohen]

[...]

>> The Gnus manual still references these external marks in section
    >> "Archiving Mails", I guess that reference just got overlooked.
    >> But without external marks, archiving mails in Gnus is rather
    >> difficult (to my knowledge), at least for the nnml backend.  So I
    >> decided to rather remove that section entirely.

    EZ> Andrew, should these parts be removed, indeed?

Yes, I think it should be removed.  As Jens says, the purpose of this section was to
indicate that group marks are stored in the filesystem for these
backends, so saving these marks doesn't require doing anything other
than copying the files. But the marks are no longer stored in the
filesystem, so the whole section is moot.  (As an irrelevant aside, for
some strange reason its under the "Browsing the Web" topic, which is why
I have never looked at it)

Best,
Andy
-- 
Andrew Cohen

bug#63497: [PATCH] Remove obsolete information on archiving mail from Gnus manual

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Andrew Cohen <cohen@bu.edu>
> Cc: Jens Schmidt <jschmidt4gnu@vodafonemail.de>,  Andrew G Cohen
>  <cohen@andy.bu.edu>,  63497@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 19 May 2023 08:39:13 +0800
> 
> 
> [...]
> 
> >> The Gnus manual still references these external marks in section
>     >> "Archiving Mails", I guess that reference just got overlooked.
>     >> But without external marks, archiving mails in Gnus is rather
>     >> difficult (to my knowledge), at least for the nnml backend.  So I
>     >> decided to rather remove that section entirely.
> 
>     EZ> Andrew, should these parts be removed, indeed?
> 
> Yes, I think it should be removed.  As Jens says, the purpose of this section was to
> indicate that group marks are stored in the filesystem for these
> backends, so saving these marks doesn't require doing anything other
> than copying the files. But the marks are no longer stored in the
> filesystem, so the whole section is moot.  (As an irrelevant aside, for
> some strange reason its under the "Browsing the Web" topic, which is why
> I have never looked at it)

OK, thanks.

Jens, would you please rework the patch according to my comments, and
re-post?

bug#63497: [PATCH] Remove obsolete information on archiving mail

[Jens Schmidt via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 243 bytes --]

Next attempt - sorry for the delay, missed the update emails to this bug.

Not sure whether removals count towards the 15 line limit but copyright 
assignment should be through now - could you please confirm, when you're 
at it?

Thanks

Jens

[-- Attachment #2: 0001-Remove-obsolete-information-on-archiving-mail.patch --]
[-- Type: text/x-patch, Size: 2478 bytes --]

From 429af1577a53f6eee34fef655286c394e4de6ee2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jens Schmidt <jschmidt4gnu@vodafonemail.de>
Date: Sat, 20 May 2023 23:46:42 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Remove obsolete information on archiving mail

The Gnus manual still references long-removed external marks in
section "Archiving Mails".  Without external marks that section is
almost pointless, so remove it completely (Bug#63497).
* doc/misc/gnus.texi (Top):
(Browsing the Web): Remove references to section.
(Archiving Mail): Remove section.
---
 doc/misc/gnus.texi | 25 -------------------------
 1 file changed, 25 deletions(-)

diff --git a/doc/misc/gnus.texi b/doc/misc/gnus.texi
index be7504c92bf..e08a5587962 100644
--- a/doc/misc/gnus.texi
+++ b/doc/misc/gnus.texi
@@ -713,7 +713,6 @@ Top
 
 Browsing the Web
 
-* Archiving Mail::
 * Web Searches::                Creating groups from articles that match a string.
 * RSS::                         Reading RDF site summary.
 
@@ -17247,7 +17246,6 @@ Browsing the Web
 interfaces to these sources.
 
 @menu
-* Archiving Mail::
 * Web Searches::                Creating groups from articles that match a string.
 * RSS::                         Reading RDF site summary.
 @end menu
@@ -17264,29 +17262,6 @@ Browsing the Web
 Unplugged}) handle downloading articles, and then you can read them at
 leisure from your local disk.  No more World Wide Wait for you.
 
-@node Archiving Mail
-@subsection Archiving Mail
-@cindex archiving mail
-@cindex backup of mail
-
-Some of the back ends, notably @code{nnml}, @code{nnfolder}, and
-@code{nnmaildir}, now actually store the article marks with each group.
-For these servers, archiving and restoring a group while preserving
-marks is fairly simple.
-
-(Preserving the group level and group parameters as well still
-requires ritual dancing and sacrifices to the @file{.newsrc.eld} deity
-though.)
-
-To archive an entire @code{nnml}, @code{nnfolder}, or @code{nnmaildir}
-server, take a recursive copy of the server directory.  There is no need
-to shut down Gnus, so archiving may be invoked by @code{cron} or
-similar.  You restore the data by restoring the directory tree, and
-adding a server definition pointing to that directory in Gnus.  The
-@ref{Article Backlog}, @ref{Asynchronous Fetching} and other things
-might interfere with overwriting data, so you may want to shut down Gnus
-before you restore the data.
-
 @node Web Searches
 @subsection Web Searches
 @cindex nnweb
-- 
2.30.2

bug#63497: [PATCH] Remove obsolete information on archiving mail

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sat, 20 May 2023 23:51:58 +0200
> From:  Jens Schmidt via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs,
>  the Swiss army knife of text editors" <bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> 
> Next attempt - sorry for the delay, missed the update emails to this bug.

Thanks, installed on the emacs-29 branch, and closing the bug.

> Not sure whether removals count towards the 15 line limit but copyright 
> assignment should be through now - could you please confirm, when you're 
> at it?

Your assignment is on file now, yes.