Subject: Re: bug#18198: Gnus fails to read ~/.newsrc with group names which are not symbols

From: Ivan Shmakov <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2015 05:52:37 +0000

>>>>> Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]> writes:
>>>>> Ivan Shmakov <[email-masked]> writes:
>>>>> Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]> writes:

 >>> Well, "[Hello]/World" isn't a valid newsgroup name,

 >> Yet (Hello)/World is.  (Per the newsgroup-name and wildmat-exact
 >> productions given in section 9.8 of RFC 3977.)

[…]

 >> The person who brought this issue to IRC has apparently used
 >> something like (nnimap "imap.gmail.com") for gnus-select-method.

 >> Though indeed, I know of no reason /not/ to set
 >> gnus-save-newsrc-file to nil in this case.

 > There should only be newsgroups in the .newsrc file -- it's for
 > interoperability with other newsreaders, and putting non-newsgroups
 > in there makes no sense.

	There still may be RFC-compliant newsgroup names which contain
	parentheses; and alt.foo.(bar) would fail just the same as
	[Hello]/World.

	Granted, I know of no such /public/ newsgroups, but whoever
	hosts an NNTP server could probably add a local one with ease.

 > So that does sound like a bug.

	As long as there’s no clear indication from Gnus that ~/.newsrc
	could easily break when used together with nnimap (and possibly
	other similar select methods), I’d rather deem it a bug in Gnus.

-- 
FSF associate member #7257  np. Bounzie boom — S. A. Kiviniemi B6A0 230E 334A