Re: mh backend

[Rajappa Iyer <rsi@lucent.com>]

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François Pinard <pinard@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Rajappa Iyer <rsi@lucent.com> writes:
> 
> > 1. Message sequences.
> 
> What are they?

In MH, I can assign a compound sequence of messages a name and can
limit my operations to operate on specific sequences.  Look upon it as 
user customizable marks.

> > 2. Picking messages based on patterns in their body or some header
> >    field.
> 
> The usual devices for this, I think, are the limiting commands (starting
> with `/') and the scoring commands (starting with `I', 'L' or 'V').
> Maybe there are others?  That makes a lot already :-).

Yes, limiting takes care of matching on headers, but unless I'm
missing something obvious, one cannot limit based on the contents
message body.  I find this occasionally useful when searching for a
particular piece of email.  

Hmm, now that I think about it, both 1 and 2 may perhaps easily be
implemented by spawning an external command like MH's pick which will
return a sequence of message numbers which match the given criteria
and have a special limiting function which will use that list.

> > 3. When I periodically delete some mail, I can folder -pack to
> >    renumber all the messages.  With Gnus it is a lot more painful.
> 
> What is the purpose of doing such an operation?  I have the impression that
> it is rather unusual that one has to enter the `nnml' hierarchy directly,
> or depends on attributed numbers.  Isn't it?

Well, the idea is that despite all the fine procmail filters I have in
place, a lot of spam and otherwise useless messages make it to my
inbox.  If I expire them, it leaves a gap in the message numbers and
then the count of messages is inaccurate since Gnus calculates the
number of articles based on the article numbers of the first and the
last articles.  Ideally, I'd like to be able to `pack' the nnml folder
in the same way as an MH folder so that I have an accurate count of
the messages in my folder.

I do think that I shall look into adapting and implementing some of
the nifty MH features that I've been silently missing for so long. :-)

Regards,
Rajappa
-- 
Rajappa Iyer <rsi@lucent.com>		#include <std_disclaimer.h>
	We're too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet.