Re: nnmaildir

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

On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 06:22:47PM -0500, Paul Jarc wrote:
> Thomas Schwinge <schwinge-lists-gnus.org-ding@nic-nac-project.de> wrote:
> > I'll try the CVS HEAD version tomorrorw.
> > Is it sufficient to just copy nnmaildir.el?
> 
> Probably, but to be sure you can use one whole, consistent checkout.
> The backslash removal might not be happening within nnmaildir anyway.

Now I'm running that latest CVS checkout of Gnus.
Starting it gives some (harmless I presume) warnings:
#v+
[...]
Loading easymenu...done
Loading gnus-start...done
Source file `/package/misc/spf/emacs-21.3-1/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/share/emacs/site-lisp/nntp.el' newer than byte-compiled file
Source file `/package/misc/spf/emacs-21.3-1/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/share/emacs/site-lisp/nnoo.el' newer than byte-compiled file
Source file `/package/misc/spf/emacs-21.3-1/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/share/emacs/site-lisp/nndraft.el' newer than byte-compiled file
Source file `/package/misc/spf/emacs-21.3-1/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/share/emacs/site-lisp/nnmail.el' newer than byte-compiled file
Source file `/package/misc/spf/emacs-21.3-1/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/share/emacs/site-lisp/mail-source.el' newer than byte-compiled file
Source file `/package/misc/spf/emacs-21.3-1/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/share/emacs/site-lisp/nnmh.el' newer than byte-compiled file
Reading /home/thomas/.newsrc.eld...
Loading gnus-group...done
Reading active file from news.schwinge.homeip.net via nntp...
Reading active file via nnmaildir...
Source file `/package/misc/spf/emacs-21.3-1/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/share/emacs/site-lisp/nnmaildir.el' newer than byte-compiled file
Opening nnmaildir server...done
Reading active file from nic-nac-project via nnmaildir...
Opening nnmaildir server on nic-nac-project...done
Loading gnus-cache...done
Loading timezone...done
Opening nnmaildir server...done
Opening nnmaildir server on nic-nac-project...done
No new newsgroups
Checking new news...
Loading gnus-sum...done
Checking new news...done
Loading gnus-topic...done
Retrieving newsgroup: nnmaildir+nic-nac-project:lists.gnus.org.ding...
Loading gnus-ml...
Source file `/package/misc/spf/emacs-21.3-1/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/share/emacs/site-lisp/mm-view.el' newer than byte-compiled file
Source file `/package/misc/spf/emacs-21.3-1/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/share/emacs/site-lisp/mm-uu.el' newer than byte-compiled file
Source file `/package/misc/spf/emacs-21.3-1/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/share/emacs/site-lisp/mml2015.el' newer than byte-compiled file
Source file `/package/misc/spf/emacs-21.3-1/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/share/emacs/site-lisp/pgg.el' newer than byte-compiled file
Source file `/package/misc/spf/emacs-21.3-1/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/share/emacs/site-lisp/pgg-def.el' newer than byte-compiled file
Source file `/package/misc/spf/emacs-21.3-1/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/share/emacs/site-lisp/pgg-parse.el' newer than byte-compiled file
Source file `/package/misc/spf/emacs-21.3-1/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/share/emacs/site-lisp/password.el' newer than byte-compiled file
Loading gnus-ml...done
Opening nnmaildir server on nic-nac-project...done
gnus-select-newsgroup: Couldn't activate group nnmaildir+nic-nac-project:lists.gnus.org.ding: No such group: lists.gnus.org.ding
#v-
#v+
thomas@speedy:~ > ls -ld Mail-nic-nac-project/lists.gnus\\.org.ding/
drwxr-xr-x    6 thomas   users         152 Jan 27 16:18 Mail-nic-nac-project/lists.gnus\.org.ding/
thomas@speedy:~ > tail -3 .gnus.el
(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
  '((nnmaildir ""                (directory "~/Mail/"))
    (nnmaildir "nic-nac-project" (directory "~/Mail-nic-nac-project/"))))
#v-

I checked it again with a new folder
#v+
thomas@speedy:~ > maildirmake Mail/test\\folder
#v-
which got to
#v+
       0: nnmaildir:testfolder
#v-

Shall I post the strace of Gnus (emacs) when entering such a maildir?

> > If you're not going to implement the mark synchronisation functionality
> > into nnmaildir, that will be the way to go.
> 
> I'm just not sure when I'll get to it.

OK.
I'm aware that you have more important things to do that that. :-)
I wrote to Bijan Soleymani and asked him if he has a working version of
the synchronisation script - otherwise I'll write it myself.

> > What's the purpose of 'save'?
> 
> In a *Summary* buffer, there are some gnus-summary-save-* commands
> (type [O C-h] to see a list); if you run one of these commands to save
> an article to a file or whatever, then the 'save mark will be set for
> that article.

I got that; although I don't quite get what I would do with the
information that an article I'll be reading again later has been saved -
since saving is just copying the article to another folger - if I got
that right.

> > 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.
> 
> I would make F correspond exactly to 'tick, without involving 'dormant
> at all.  Otherwise it's too complicated, and the stored information
> may be ambiguous.

That would of course be the cleaner solution.
But how should 'dormant and 'save then be reflected?
In what way would my solution be ambiguous?

> >> 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.
> 
> Yes, but they also wouldn't be able to interpret them.

So it should leave them alone.

> ":1,F" does
> not necessarily mean the same thing as ":2,F".  ":2,F" should mean the
> same thing to all MUAs, but different MUAs may experiment with
> different schemes, and might both use ":1,F" to mean different
> things.  An MUA shouldn't change something it doesn't understand, but
> with ":1," info, different MUAs may think they understand each other
> when they really don't.

OK. So using experimental semantics is not the way to go.
But I was quite surprised when I saw mutt just weed out the flags it
didn't understand.
I think I'll write to the maintainer about that (and I'll check other
maildir-using programs I' using).

Regards,
 Thomas