6.6.1 Directory Groups

If you have a directory that has lots of articles in separate files in it, you might treat it as a newsgroup. The files have to have numerical names, of course.

This might be an opportune moment to mention ange-ftp (and its successor efs), that most wonderful of all wonderful Emacs packages. When I wrote nndir, I didn’t think much about it—a back end to read directories. Big deal.

ange-ftp changes that picture dramatically. For instance, if you enter the ange-ftp file name /ftp.hpc.uh.edu:/pub/emacs/ding-list/ as the directory name, ange-ftp or efs will actually allow you to read this directory over at ‘sina’ as a newsgroup. Distributed news ahoy!

nndir will use NOV files if they are present.

nndir is a “read-only” back end—you can’t delete or expire articles with this method. You can use nnmh or nnml for whatever you use nndir for, so you could switch to any of those methods if you feel the need to have a non-read-only nndir.