7.3 Score Variables

gnus-use-scoring

If nil, Gnus will not check for score files, and will not, in general, do any score-related work. This is t by default.

gnus-kill-killed

If this variable is nil, Gnus will never apply score files to articles that have already been through the kill process. While this may save you lots of time, it also means that if you apply a kill file to a group, and then change the kill file and want to run it over you group again to kill more articles, it won’t work. You have to set this variable to t to do that. (It is t by default.)

gnus-kill-files-directory

All kill and score files will be stored in this directory, which is initialized from the SAVEDIR environment variable by default. This is ~/News/ by default.

gnus-score-file-suffix

Suffix to add to the group name to arrive at the score file name (SCORE by default.)

gnus-score-uncacheable-files

All score files are normally cached to avoid excessive re-loading of score files. However, this might make your Emacs grow big and bloated, so this regexp can be used to weed out score files unlikely to be needed again. It would be a bad idea to deny caching of all.SCORE, while it might be a good idea to not cache comp.infosystems.www.authoring.misc.ADAPT. In fact, this variable is ‘ADAPT$’ by default, so no adaptive score files will be cached.

gnus-save-score

If you have really complicated score files, and do lots of batch scoring, then you might set this variable to t. This will make Gnus save the scores into the .newsrc.eld file.

If you do not set this to t, then manual scores (like those set with V s (gnus-summary-set-score)) will not be preserved across group visits.

gnus-score-interactive-default-score

Score used by all the interactive raise/lower commands to raise/lower score with. Default is 1000, which may seem excessive, but this is to ensure that the adaptive scoring scheme gets enough room to play with. We don’t want the small changes from the adaptive scoring to overwrite manually entered data.

gnus-summary-default-score

Default score of an article, which is 0 by default.

gnus-summary-expunge-below

Don’t display the summary lines of articles that have scores lower than this variable. This is nil by default, which means that no articles will be hidden. This variable is local to the summary buffers, and has to be set from gnus-summary-mode-hook.

gnus-score-over-mark

Mark (in the third column) used for articles with a score over the default. Default is ‘+’.

gnus-score-below-mark

Mark (in the third column) used for articles with a score below the default. Default is ‘-’.

gnus-score-find-score-files-function

Function used to find score files for the current group. This function is called with the name of the group as the argument.

Predefined functions available are:

gnus-score-find-single

Only apply the group’s own score file.

gnus-score-find-bnews

Apply all score files that match, using bnews syntax. This is the default. If the current group is ‘gnu.emacs.gnus’, for instance, all.emacs.all.SCORE, not.alt.all.SCORE and gnu.all.SCORE would all apply. In short, the instances of ‘all’ in the score file names are translated into ‘.*’, and then a regexp match is done.

This means that if you have some score entries that you want to apply to all groups, then you put those entries in the all.SCORE file.

The score files are applied in a semi-random order, although Gnus will try to apply the more general score files before the more specific score files. It does this by looking at the number of elements in the score file names—discarding the ‘all’ elements.

gnus-score-find-hierarchical

Apply all score files from all the parent groups. This means that you can’t have score files like all.SCORE, but you can have SCORE, comp.SCORE and comp.emacs.SCORE for each server.

This variable can also be a list of functions. In that case, all these functions will be called with the group name as argument, and all the returned lists of score files will be applied. These functions can also return lists of lists of score alists directly. In that case, the functions that return these non-file score alists should probably be placed before the “real” score file functions, to ensure that the last score file returned is the local score file. Phu.

For example, to do hierarchical scoring but use a non-server-specific overall score file, you could use the value

(list (lambda (group) ("all.SCORE"))
      'gnus-score-find-hierarchical)

gnus-score-expiry-days

This variable says how many days should pass before an unused score file entry is expired. If this variable is nil, no score file entries are expired. It’s 7 by default.

gnus-update-score-entry-dates

If this variable is non-nil, temporary score entries that have been triggered (matched) will have their dates updated. (This is how Gnus controls expiry—all non-matched-entries will become too old while matched entries will stay fresh and young.) However, if you set this variable to nil, even matched entries will grow old and will have to face that oh-so grim reaper.

gnus-score-after-write-file-function

Function called with the name of the score file just written.

gnus-score-thread-simplify

If this variable is non-nil, article subjects will be simplified for subject scoring purposes in the same manner as with threading—according to the current value of gnus-simplify-subject-functions. If the scoring entry uses substring or exact matching, the match will also be simplified in this manner.