Subject: bug#9302: nmail-extra-headers too mysterious

From: Dave Abrahams <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:55:09 -0400

on Wed Aug 17 2011, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi-AT-gnus.org> wrote:

> Dave Abrahams <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> I just saw this message flash by:
>>
>>   `Cc' isn't present in `nnmail-extra-headers'
>>
>> which is mysterious enough as it is, and should be more descriptive.
>> Why would I care that `Cc' isn't present in `nnmail-extra-headers'?  Why
>> would Gnus care?
>
> Because you tried to limit the summary buffer (or something like that)
> using criteria Gnus didn't have, because `nnmail-extra-headers' didn't
> include Cc.

Interesting... now *that* would make an informative error message!  How
about changing it to something based on what you wrote above?

Hmm, I was not using any kind of creative limit―it would have been one
of the built-in options (perhaps `/ A' ?)
Maybe this means the default for nnmail-extra-headers is wrong.
Shouldn't the built-in queries work out-of-the-box?

>> Near as I can tell by trolling through the info manual, this variable
>> has something to do with making information available to summary line
>> display, but if that's the case, it's hardly obvious from its docstring,
>> which is simply "Extra headers to parse."  Parse when?  For what purpose?
>
> Parse to make available for Gnus.  

Which, I'm sorry to say, gives me no new information.  If Gnus is
parsing something it is naturally going to be for programmatic
consumption.  Maybe you want to say something about what kinds of things
Gnus might do with that information (e.g. limit).

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com