Skip intermediate mbox file in mail-sources?

Skip intermediate mbox file in mail-sources?

[David Z Maze]

I was tracking down some issues[1] with sucking in my mail today, and
was wondering why Gnus does this:

  (1) Open mail source.  Read one message at a time.  Concatenate into
      a single mbox file ($HOME/.emacs-mail-crash-box, then copied
      into Incomingxxxxxx.)

  (2) Open the mbox file.  Parse out a message at a time, and call the
      function named in nnmail-split-method on each.

Is there a reason the intermediate mbox file is necessary?  (I could
entirely believe that, once upon a time, GNUS only grokked mbox
format, and "translate anything to mbox" was the easiest way to add
more mail sources.)  With formats like directory, pop, maildir, and
imap, where you can readily fetch a message at a time, this adds an
unnecessary layer of indirection.  This also results in side effects:
From at the start of the line gets the ugly mbox quoting, which really
shouldn't be necessary unless the backend is also in mbox format.

-- 
David Maze             dmaze@mit.edu          http://www.mit.edu/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
	-- Abra Mitchell

Re: Skip intermediate mbox file in mail-sources?

[Kai Großjohann]

Sounds like a plan.
-- 
This line is not blank.

Re: Skip intermediate mbox file in mail-sources?

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Tue, 27 May 2003, dmaze@MIT.EDU wrote:
> Is there a reason the intermediate mbox file is necessary?  (I could
> entirely believe that, once upon a time, GNUS only grokked mbox
> format, and "translate anything to mbox" was the easiest way to add
> more mail sources.)  With formats like directory, pop, maildir, and
> imap, where you can readily fetch a message at a time, this adds an
> unnecessary layer of indirection.  

I think it makes sense to have a uniform format for incoming mail.  I
don't think mbox is it, but there should be just one format.  How
about a message digest with MIME attachments?  Gnus already has the
functionality to parse those, so the backend modifications should be
fairly simple.

Fetching a message at a time may be inconvenient or unfeasible, so I
think a format like digests that allows 1 to N attachments with
minimal overhead and no quoting issues is nice.

> This also results in side effects: From at the start of the line
> gets the ugly mbox quoting, which really shouldn't be necessary
> unless the backend is also in mbox format.

MIME attachments would avoid this problem and most others with the
mbox format, I think.

Ted

Re: Skip intermediate mbox file in mail-sources?

[Kai Großjohann]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> Fetching a message at a time may be inconvenient or unfeasible, so I
> think a format like digests that allows 1 to N attachments with
> minimal overhead and no quoting issues is nice.

I think it's a good idea to process one message at a time, if the
fetching process allows this.

The fetching that uses movemail to fetch from /var/mail/jrl could use
the existing mechanism to narrow to each message in sequence, and
then call the one-message-at-a-time function.
-- 
This line is not blank.

Re: Skip intermediate mbox file in mail-sources?

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

David Z Maze <dmaze@MIT.EDU> writes:

> Is there a reason the intermediate mbox file is necessary? 

An intermediate file is necessary (for safety -- in case Emacs
crashes while splitting) and useful (it allows backends to not write
more files than they have to when getting many messages).

mbox is not a good format, though.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen