Re: Last change to process.c breaks fetching pop3 mail (gnus/pop3.el)

[Richard Stallman]

    IIUC, the problem is that a network process' sentinel would like to
    be able to differentiate between the case where the connection is
    closed because the remote end closed the connection, or because it
    was closed by a call to delete-process.  

If that is the issue, we could arrange for delete-process to call the
sentinel in a special way.  Perhaps we could have a different state
for connections closed by delete-process.

    Now, to let the sentinel treat network processes and subprocesses
    alike, Noah suggests that the sentinel could look to see if the
    process' buffer is still alive.

That is clearly the wrong criterion, since after delete-process the
buffer would often still be alive.

    The string passed to the sentinel is "finished\n" if delete-process
    was called;  otherwise it is "exited abnormally with code 256".

That general idea is ok, though using the status symbol would
be a cleaner way to distinguish.

But "finished" is the wrong way to decribe delete-process.
"deleted" would be more appropriate.