Re: Difference between nnmail- and gnus- variables?

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Pankaj Jangid <pankaj@codeisgreat.org> writes:

> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>
>>>> In OO terms, nnmail.el can be thought of as an abstract parent class for
>>>> all backends belonging to the "store messages as files on disk" type of
>>>> server. It provides settings and functions that are used in common by
>>>> nnml, nnmbox, nnmaildir, etc.
>>>
>>> This clarifies a lot of things for me. Especially, it is now clear that
>>> this won’t work in my case. Because I am using IMAP.
>>
>> nnimap mostly uses nnmail for its splitting functions, and it looks like
>> its expiry settings as well -- that's pretty much it.
>
> Ok. I got a little confused by "store messages as file on disk". Since
> IMAP backend is like nntp because mails are mostly controlled by the
> server. I thought you are referring to the backends which manages emails
> themselves.

IMAP is a little odd just because it's kind of in between: the server
handles message storage, but the user "owns" the mail in the sense that
they're allowed to split, move, expire, etc. So some of the nnmail stuff
is relevant (splitting), but not most of it. A "real" nnmail backend is
one that ends up calling `nnmail-get-new-mail'.