Re: Size of Gnus and Emacs

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:

> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>
>> I've got %y, which is unread and unticked.
>>
>> I finally went and looked it up: unseen means the
>> message has never before been displayed in a summary
>> buffer, or seen by gnus or you.  Unread means you
>> just haven't read it. In my case, while
>> experimenting, I had removed the read mark from three
>> messages in gmane.emacs.help, then tested from the
>> *Group* buffer. That meant those message were "seen"
>> but "unread", hence the discrepancy.
>
> Great! We should be private investigators!

I think in order to qualify as investigators we'll have to discover
something that isn't directly described in the manual :)

> Off-topic Gnus note: In the Gnus manual section on
> daemons [1], I read
>
>> Gnus, being larger than any program ever written
>> (allegedly) ...
>
> So, we just have to keep this up every day, and we will
> have covered most of Gnus by the time we retire!
>
> What they are saying is: Gnus, a module of Emacs, is
> bigger than Emacs, excluding all modules on the same
> level as Gnus (?). Which are those? Rmail and W3M? Or
> even Dired? Because it would seem illogical that Gnus
> is bigger than Emacs, including Gnus.

As Jambunathan noted, the Gnus manual is less of a manual, more of a
"Hitchhiker's Guide to Gnus". On the other hand, gnus can often *feel*
like the largest program ever written. Maybe it's like the Tardis,
bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. That would explain how
it can be bigger than emacs, in which it is contained...