Re: Gnus vs Cache : need advice plus a question

[Kevin Greiner]

Xavier Maillard <zedek@gnu-rox.org> writes:

> AFAIK, after lot of RTFMs, I don't really see any good
> alternative than to use agent. I have enabled it again since I
> can't live without mails. I tweaked it more carefully. I will see
> if that's ok after a couple of days.

The most likely performance problem is that you've configured the
agent to prefetch articles upon group entry.  If you know that you're
going to read all, or at least most, this can be a good thing to do.
However, the delay can be excessive.

I personally have most groups associated with the default category and
I've configured that category to not prefetch any articles.  In
this configuration, the agent is used to cache only headers so the
performance is usually, to me, quite good.  If I see any interesting
articles, I usually process mark them (the @ key to set the % mark)
and then fetch them (J S) in bulk.  That way I can navigate over a
thread without having to wait to fetch individual articles.  

I also have gnus-select-article-hook bound to
'(gnus-agent-fetch-selected-article) so I don't have to remember to
manually add articles to the agent.  This hook automatically adds new
articles so that I only fetch them once from the server.  That way, I
don't have to pay the overhead of downloading an article multiple
times.

Kevin