Re: nnmaildir

[Thomas Schwinge <schwinge-lists-gnus.org-ding@nic-nac-project.de>]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 12:42:23PM -0500, Paul Jarc wrote:
> Thomas Schwinge <schwinge-lists-gnus.org-ding@nic-nac-project.de> wrote:
> > although I was not able to enter the ones whose are containing a
> > '\': The were refused with:
> > #v+
> > Retrieving newsgroup: nnmaildir+nic-nac-project:lists.gnus.org.ding...
> > gnus-select-newsgroup: Couldn't activate group nnmaildir+nic-nac-project:lists.gnus.org.ding: No such group: lists.gnus.org.ding
> > #v-
> 
> I'm not sure what's happening here.  It works for me, with a CVS
> checkout from 2004-01-25.  What version of Gnus are you using?

I've been using the CVS checkout with release tag v5-10-6.
nnmaildir.el is dated '2003-04-15'.
I'll try the CVS HEAD version tomorrorw.
Is it sufficient to just copy nnmaildir.el?

> You could work around it by making a new directory for nnmaildir to
> look at, which would contain symlinks to the actual maildirs.  The
> symlink names could omit "\".

Yes, I saw that possibility but I didn't want to go that way because I
didn't want to maintain another hierarchy of folders.
But of course I'll do it that way until I know enough of Emacs' Lisp to
implement the needed functionality by myself. :-)

> > The issue remaining to be resolved for me is that I'd like to have the
> > status flags synchronized between Gnus and the maildirs
> 
> You might find this useful for now:
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/55100

So, do you have a working version of such a script? I didn't try this
one because of Bijan Soleymani writing in his second email:
#v+
Oops, I just noticed a couple of small errors in the script. Oh
well... Just consider it as a proof of concept thing. Yes such a
simple script can be written :)
#v-

If you're not going to implement the mark synchronisation functionality
into nnmaildir, that will be the way to go.

> > I was not yet able to figure out which of the possible marks from
> > <URL:http://www.gnus.org/manual/gnus_64.html> are actually used and
> > stored on disk by nnmaildir
> 
> The ones I know of are 'dormant, 'expire, 'forward, 'read, 'reply,
> 'save, and 'tick.

Gnus      | Maildir
----------+---------
dormant   |
expire    | T
forward   | P
read      | S
reply     | R
save      |
tick      | F

'dormant' and 'save' are missing. I'm not quite happy with 'expire'
but it should be possible.

What's the purpose of 'save'? I don't quite get this out of
<URL:http://www.gnus.org/manual/gnus_67.html>.

I'd say that 'dormant' is similar to 'tick', so what about that:
If a message which is new to Gnus has 'F' set, it is displayed as
'ticked'. When the user changes the mark to 'dormant' this is recorded
using the current scheme but the 'F' is preserved.
Clients that don't know how to differentiate between these two will see
maildir's 'F' and Gnus is able to tell if a message is marked as
'ticked' or 'dormant'.

> > for the others (dormant, ...)  we could either try to convince DJB
> > to add them to the specification or the 'experimental semantics'
> > described above could be used.
> 
> The experimental semantics wouldn't be useful; that would mean that
> the message's info would look like ":1,..." which other MUAs wouldn't
> understand.

I had not tried that before - I thought that MUAs would leave the flags
alone the didn't understand.
Now I've got disabused (Does one use this word that way? - I'm always
willing to improve my English.)
Mutt does leave them alone - as long as you don't change any flags.
Doing so, unknown ones will get weeded out.
That's no good behaviour as DJB declares that "New flags may be defined
later." in <URL:http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html>.

Regards,
 Thomas