koldfront

Quickly marking a thread read #gnus #activitypub #elisp #nntp

I have been implementing an ActivityPub server with an nntp-, rather than an https- or client-api-, interface.

As my blog engine with an nntp interface is called Lantern, the ActivityPub server is called Illuminant.

It is starting to work nicely, and as it automatically fetches parents of notes, I often see entire threads I don't care to read, so I want to efficiently mark them as read and move on.

Searching the Gnus interface and manual I found T⃣k⃣ - gnus-summary-kill-thread - which almost does what I want. Actually it does too much, it also collapses the thread, which confuses my eyes "huh, suddenly some lines disappeared, is something awry?"

So I made a copy of gnus-summary-kill-thread and simplified it to this:

    ; My own version of gnus-summary-kill-thread:
    (defun asjo-gnus-summary-mark-thread-read ()
      "Mark articles under current thread as read."
      (interactive "" gnus-summary-mode)
      (let ((articles (gnus-summary-articles-in-thread)))
        (save-excursion
          ;; Expand the thread.
          (gnus-summary-show-thread)
          ;; Mark all the articles.
          (while articles
            (gnus-summary-goto-subject (car articles))
            (gnus-summary-mark-article-as-read gnus-read-mark)
            (setq articles (cdr articles)))))
        ;; Go to next unread subject.
      (gnus-summary-next-subject 1 t)
      (gnus-set-mode-line 'summary))

and bound it to the unused shortcut T⃣r⃣:

    (define-key gnus-summary-mode-map [(T) (r)] 'asjo-gnus-summary-mark-thread-read)

and won't you know it, when my timeline suddenly had a 400+ note long thread, I pressed T⃣r⃣, and Bob's became my uncle, as the thread was marked read and the first article after the thread was opened.