🚀 go-pugleaf

>I think it is quiet clear that we are using the same name for 2 diff ideas.  We
>should decide on terminology for this technology ASAP so not to confuse people

Virtual groups, meta groups, vgr's, grex's... To add to the confusion I
like the idea of pseudo groups: This is a way to group newsgroups, but
not merge them totally to a single virtual group. The groups in pseudo
groups would still be individual and retailn their real group names.
There are many ways, how groups in pseudo groups are presented to a
user. You could have a subject menu showing the group name and subject
line for each article. Or you could have a sub-group selection menu
presented to you when you enter the pseudo group.

I see pseudo groups completely orthogonal to virtual groups etc. You can
have virtual groups, pseudo groups, pseudo groups containing virtual
groups, pseudo groups containing pseudo groups etc. Pseudo groups are
just another way to partition your news universe.

An example of one application of pseudo groups: I would have pseudo
groups called work, programming, sources and hobbies. Work group would
contain all the groups related to my work, e.g. comp.sys.sun,
comp.mail.mime, comp.sources.x, alt.sources, alt.sources.d,
comp.sys.sun.sources etc. Programming would contain groups related to
programming like comp.lang.c, comp.sources.x, comp.client-server etc.
Sources would contain all the groups distributing various program
sources. Hobbies could have rec.music.makers.synth, alt.goth,
comp.window.x, comp.sources.x.

As you see there would be different kinds of groups in one pseudo group,
like sources and discussion groups. I think the virtual group idea to
merge all the articles of its component groups doesn't fit into this
kind of grouping very well. Another thing to note is that a groups can
be in many pseudo groups (which is the case with virtual groups, too, I
understand).

Do you think my definition of pseudo groups matches any of the terms
mentioned in previous articles? Do you think pseudo groups would be of
any use? Or do you prefer to browse you hundreds of plain, virtual or
other groups as a simple linear list?

>grex's are a very primative vgr and should be only a stop gap.  once we have
>a reader and transport independant agent that handles grex's it should be 
>scrapped and redone to handle vgr's.

I don't think there is One True Universal Concept of accessing news, so
I would like to see different grouping methods to proliferate. Each one
could then choose the method they like. Even if the gnus-virtual-groups
were a subset of vgrs, the former may be preferred, if it is easier to
control what groups go to what virtual groups with it, for example.

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