Gnus state, feed commands

[Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se>]

In Gnus, I have a group like this:

mail.misc (5)

to collect incomings mails.

I'm thinking, wouldn't it be cool if you never had to
check for mails, instead Emacs did that, and then told
you "you have 5 mails" in the mode line?

I guess I could schedule checking with
`run-with-idle-timer' - coincidentally, that's great,
because when you work (i.e., type) you don't want to be
disturbed and get mails, but when you idle for some
time, it would be a good slot for Emacs to check for
them.

To change the mode line, I have this in my .emacs:

(defun set-mode-line ()
  "Mode line: Show the mode line elements if the
respective global booleans are set."
  (interactive)
  (setq-default mode-line-format
   `(" "
     (*show-mode-line-modified* mode-line-modified)
     (*show-mode-line-modified* " ")
     (*show-mode-line-caption* *mode-line-caption*)
     (*show-mode-line-caption* " ")
     (*show-default-directory* default-directory)
     (*show-mode-line-buffer-identification* mode-line-buffer-identification)
     (*show-mode-line-buffer-identification* " ")
     (line-number-mode   "[%l] ")
     (column-number-mode "{%c} ")
     (*show-mode-line-modes* mode-line-modes)
     )))
(set-mode-line)

So you see, putting that information in the mode line
shouldn't be that difficult.

But what I don't know is: how do I access the "state"
of Gnus? I.e., how do I get that number "5"? And, how
do I feed command to Gnus, in the background, without
switching buffers or triggering any other visual noise?

-- 
Emanuel Berg, programmer-for-rent. CV, projects, etc at uXu
underground experts united:  http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573