A gnus-posting-styles problem

[William Daffer]

emacs version: GNU Emacs 21.2.1 (powerpc-apple-darwin, X toolkit) of 
               2006-03-22 on kodaira.local

gnus version 5.9.0


I'm having a problem with gnus-posting-styles. The definition of this
variable is one I've been using for years with perfect success.  I use
it to match up .sigfiles with posters I'm responding to, so I use a
style like this (using 'Joe' as the example person)

(header "From" "Joe.*"
  (signature (adv-random-signature-no-sep "Joe")))

where 'Joe' is a directory containing files to be selected randomly as
.sigfiles when replying to 'Joe.'

The problem is that this seems to have stopped working, after having
worked nicely for, oh, 5 years. I'm getting signatures from the
default case all the time instead of the ones for the particular user.

I stepped into gnus-configure-posting-styles in the debugger and stopped just
before the call to (message-fetch-field...) and then stepped
over. Here's the snippet of code in question. (from around line 560
in gnus-msg.el

----------- cut ----------- cut ----------- cut ----------- cut ----------- cut

                (let ((header (message-fetch-field (pop style))))
                  (and header
                       (string-match (pop style) header))))

----------- cut ----------- cut ----------- cut ----------- cut ----------- cut

The return from message-fetch-field is always nil. so I stepped into
that function (from the message.el in the gnus distribution that came
the fink build of emacs, v21.1) and then into mail-fetch-fields in
mail-utils.el called by message-fetch-field. (which is also part of
the fink 21.1 emacs) I was surprised to see it searching a buffer for
the header becasue the buffer containing the followup has nothing in
it at the time gnus-configure-posting-styles is called (which explains
why the search always returns nil). Also, those fields are available
before the call to message-fetch-field in the code above, at least
when I 'eval header' while in the debugger stopped just before the
'(let ...' above I get the vector consisting of

[article-number subject from date message-id references ...]

and I've seen that vector elsewhere in the gnus code.

So, I'm wondering whether this is a version mismatch between
gnus/message.el/mail-utils.el

I'd be surprised if it was between gnus/message.el, since they're in
the same directory, but I guess it's possible that it could be between
mail-utils.el and message.el

M-x locate-libary message
Library is file /sw/share/emacs/21.2/lisp/gnus/message.elc

M-x locate-libary gnus-msg
Library is file /sw/share/emacs/21.2/lisp/gnus/gnus-msg.elc

M-x locate-libary mail-utils
Library is file /sw/share/emacs/21.2/lisp/mail/mail-utils.elc

M-x locate-libary gnus
Library is file /sw/share/emacs/21.2/lisp/gnus/gnus.elc


Any help would be appreciated. I could, of course, write little
functions that do the search but I'd like to know why what's
advertized in the info file isn't working and whether it's some
misconfiguration on my part.

whd
-- 
CONVENT, n.  A place of retirement for woman who wish for leisure to 
meditate upon the vice of idleness.
        -- Ambrose Bierce: _The Devil's Dictionary_