imap or offlineimap ?

imap or offlineimap ?

[Erik Colson]

Dear all,

I'm actually using gnus with nnimap. Works great but I'm missing some
kind of offline index. I'm looking for this since I want to rapidly find
mails with some content by scanning through all mailboxes.

So I thought I might use offlineimap to have local maildir with mairix
as index...

But that would give me a full local copy of the whole messages which I
would prefer not to have.

Any other known options ?

-- 
erik

Re: imap or offlineimap ?

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Erik Colson <eco@ecocode.net> writes:

> I'm actually using gnus with nnimap. Works great but I'm missing some
> kind of offline index. I'm looking for this since I want to rapidly find
> mails with some content by scanning through all mailboxes.

`G G' and friends works well on nnimap groups if you want to search for
stuff.  (On most IMAP servers.)

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

Re: imap or offlineimap ?

[Erik Colson]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Erik Colson <eco@ecocode.net> writes:
>
>> I'm actually using gnus with nnimap. Works great but I'm missing some
>> kind of offline index. I'm looking for this since I want to rapidly find
>> mails with some content by scanning through all mailboxes.
>
> `G G' and friends works well on nnimap groups if you want to search for
> stuff.  (On most IMAP servers.)

Hi Lars,

I tried G G and it works for searching in 1 mailbox. But I want to
search through _all_ mailboxes. Tried it with a virtualgroup, but that
doesn't support G G :/

Best
-- 
erik

Re: imap or offlineimap ?

[Tassilo Horn]

Erik Colson <eco@ecocode.net> writes:

Hi Erik,

> I tried G G and it works for searching in 1 mailbox. But I want to
> search through _all_ mailboxes.

Mark all groups of that server with the process mark (#), and then do `G
G'.  (If you want to restrict the search to some header like Subject,
To, From,..., then use `C-u G G'.  That works much faster for some IMAP
servers that don't build an index for the complete messages.)

Bye,
Tassilo
-- 
Sent from my Emacs

Re: imap or offlineimap ?

[Erik Colson]

Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> writes:

> Erik Colson <eco@ecocode.net> writes:
>
> Hi Erik,
>
>> I tried G G and it works for searching in 1 mailbox. But I want to
>> search through _all_ mailboxes.
>
> Mark all groups of that server with the process mark (#), and then do `G
> G'.  (If you want to restrict the search to some header like Subject,
> To, From,..., then use `C-u G G'.  That works much faster for some IMAP
> servers that don't build an index for the complete messages.)
>
> Bye,
> Tassilo

OK Great! This does the job nicely. Thanks.

Just annoying that Gnus re-asks the header when using C-u G G for every
different imap server. (I have multiple imap accounts)

Best
-- 
erik

Re: imap or offlineimap ?

[Tassilo Horn]

Erik Colson <eco@ecocode.net> writes:

Hi Erik,

>> Mark all groups of that server with the process mark (#), and then do
>> `G G'.  (If you want to restrict the search to some header like
>> Subject, To, From,..., then use `C-u G G'.  That works much faster
>> for some IMAP servers that don't build an index for the complete
>> messages.)
>
> OK Great! This does the job nicely. Thanks.
>
> Just annoying that Gnus re-asks the header when using C-u G G for
> every different imap server. (I have multiple imap accounts)

Oh, indeed.  I process-marked 2 imap groups on different servers, did
`C-u G G', and I am queried twice for the header, too.  And when exiting
the nnir result group containing messages mixed from groups of different
servers I get this (harmless) error

  gnus-configure-frame: Selecting deleted buffer

which might be related.

I added to the Cc who is the nnir wizard. ;-)

Bye,
Tassilo
-- 
Sent from my Emacs

Re: imap or offlineimap ?

[Andrew Cohen]

>>>>> "Tassilo" == Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> writes:

    Tassilo> Erik Colson <eco@ecocode.net> writes: Hi Erik,

    >>> Mark all groups of that server with the process mark (#), and
    >>> then do `G G'.  (If you want to restrict the search to some
    >>> header like Subject, To, From,..., then use `C-u G G'.  That
    >>> works much faster for some IMAP servers that don't build an
    >>> index for the complete messages.)
    >> 
    >> OK Great! This does the job nicely. Thanks.
    >> 
    >> Just annoying that Gnus re-asks the header when using C-u G G for
    >> every different imap server. (I have multiple imap accounts)

    Tassilo> Oh, indeed.  I process-marked 2 imap groups on different
    Tassilo> servers, did `C-u G G', and I am queried twice for the
    Tassilo> header, too.  


This is tough to avoid. Different servers may respond differently (when
searching between different kinds of servers, e.g. imap and nntp where
the constraints are completely different, but also when doing raw imap
searches on different imap servers) so at the moment each server is
treated as an independent search. I could check whether or not the
search involves multiple imap servers, try to reorder them relative to
non-imap servers, and re-use the first input for the constraint but this
would probably break on certain combinations of imap searches and
servers. All in all I thought it best to just suffer through entering
the constraint multiple times. 

I guess I could special-case the raw imap search and treat
header-limited searches differently. I generally don't like this kind of
special casing, but I'll think again if there is a better way.

    Tassilo> And when exiting the nnir result group containing messages
    Tassilo> mixed from groups of different servers I get this
    Tassilo> (harmless) error

    Tassilo>   gnus-configure-frame: Selecting deleted buffer

I doubt this is related (at least it shouldn't be:)). I'm pretty swamped
at the moment but I'll see if I can track it down.

Re: imap or offlineimap ?

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Andrew Cohen <cohen@andy.bu.edu> writes:

> I guess I could special-case the raw imap search and treat
> header-limited searches differently. I generally don't like this kind of
> special casing, but I'll think again if there is a better way.

How about sorting the groups on the method first (i.e., nnimap, nntp,
etc), and then issuing the prompt once per method type?  I think that
would give you the correct number of prompts for all use cases.

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

Re: imap or offlineimap ?

[Andrew Cohen]

>>>>> "Lars" == Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

    Lars> Andrew Cohen <cohen@andy.bu.edu> writes:
    >> I guess I could special-case the raw imap search and treat
    >> header-limited searches differently. I generally don't like this
    >> kind of special casing, but I'll think again if there is a better
    >> way.

    Lars> How about sorting the groups on the method first (i.e.,
    Lars> nnimap, nntp, etc), and then issuing the prompt once per
    Lars> method type?  I think that would give you the correct number
    Lars> of prompts for all use cases.

Turns out this was much easier than I thought. I've added caching for
imap searches, and I'll fix up the others shortly (although imap is
probably the only use case).

Andy