Re: maildir - whats the skinny?

["Matt Armstrong" <matt+dated+1007787514.dc3e19@lickey.com>]

Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:

> I had sought to avoid some other pitfalls I ran into by staying
> clear of mbox format.  But looks like it may not be possible.  So
> figuring a way to fix the pitfalls is next.

I'd like to have a 'directory' mail source that supported Maildir
spool folders, if only to avoid the mbox escaping of "^From " in the
message body.


> Each beginning with what `formail' thinks are more message headers.

Slightly off topic, but formail has an -m argument.  By default
formail will think it sees a new message when it sees 2 headers in a
row.  Use -m 5 and it'll require 5 headers, which might fix the
problem.


> And then get some kind of smooth working technique for posting from
> those nnml groups.  At that point I will say goodbye to gnus-agent.

I run "leafnode" (http://www.leafnode.org) to have a local nntp cache
of the groups I read.  Accessing the messages is still slower than an
nntp group, but fast enough for me.  Leafnode allows you to post to
it, and then it goes and posts to the main server when you tell it to.
So even if you don't read news via leafnode, you can post to leafnode
as a kind of nntp send queue.  (there may be a better way though)


> Nifty as the agent is it has never been fully integrated into
> gnus. And has always had some semi-major irritations.  I think I
> will enjoy having full functionallity on news this way.

Prompted by some recent discussion here about Wanderlust, I checked it
out and was impressed.  It appeared generally faster than Gnus and to
have a better (or, at least, less organically grown) back end system
that supported a richer set of disconnected modes.  E.g. you can have
mail stored in a plain Maildir, and Wanderlust will cache metadata in
a separate dir -- so you end up with the functional equivalent to nnml
but with a plain Maildir folder (which procmail can deliver to
directly).  But, alas, as far as I could tell it didn't have a way to
read mail "newsreader style" where only new messages show by default,
so with Gnus I stay.  I also have considerable inertia invested in
Gnus over the years.  ;-)


-- 
matt