From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/75089 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eric Abrahamsen Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Streamlining first-time Gnus usage Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:00:32 +0800 Message-ID: <87r5dibc4f.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> References: <87bp4pyvgd.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1292472191 22217 80.91.229.12 (16 Dec 2010 04:03:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 04:03:11 +0000 (UTC) To: ding@gnus.org Original-X-From: ding-owner+M23445@lists.math.uh.edu Thu Dec 16 05:03:07 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: ding-account@gmane.org Original-Received: from util0.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.18]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PT53Z-0003Og-Pg for ding-account@gmane.org; Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:03:06 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by util0.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1PT51j-0007dh-N4; Wed, 15 Dec 2010 22:01:11 -0600 Original-Received: from mx1.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.32]) by util0.math.uh.edu with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1PT51h-0007dU-Rl for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Wed, 15 Dec 2010 22:01:09 -0600 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.231.51]) by mx1.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1PT51W-0006oJ-LL for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Wed, 15 Dec 2010 22:01:09 -0600 Original-Received: from lo.gmane.org ([80.91.229.12]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1PT51U-0007I6-GF for ding@gnus.org; Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:00:56 +0100 Original-Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PT51U-0002oA-8N for ding@gnus.org; Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:00:56 +0100 Original-Received: from 123.121.219.148 ([123.121.219.148]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:00:56 +0100 Original-Received: from eric by 123.121.219.148 with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:00:56 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 44 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: 123.121.219.148 User-Agent: Gnus/5.110011 (No Gnus v0.11) Emacs/23.2 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:AthFInQB9OhXtg5t1gZk5TI5WyE= X-Spam-Score: -0.7 (/) List-ID: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:75089 Archived-At: On Thu, Dec 16 2010, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen wrote: > Eric Abrahamsen writes: > >> As a recent first-time Gnus user, the real suckage came with importing >> existing old mail. > > I've never actually imported any mail from anywhere, so I don't know > what the issues are. Parsing Outlook mboxes or something? Yeah, it's an issue one never thinks about once you've got it working, so I think it's an easy candidate for developer overlook. Even I, three months later, am having trouble remembering why I lost so much hair. In my case I was snarfing mboxes from an Apple Mail installation. I was following the instructions under 6.4.8 "Incorporating Old Mail", creating a nndoc group and then respooling. If nothing went wrong it was okay, but the minute it choked, everything went to hell and it was nearly impossible to get back on track. I ended up with three or four duplicate copies of emails and some emails that I never could import. I didn't understand the precariousness of the .newsrc.eld file back then, and kept trying to change the nnml article numbers, and nothing worked, and I felt like gnus hated me. My nnml article numbers were approaching 100,000 by the time I figured it out (gnus-group-compact-group was a godsend). This would be a prime candidate for Assistance, I think. Even now, I have a heck of a time importing emails. While I was screwing up moving my gnus installation into a different directory I got a spurious Mail/misc directory with a single email in it, and there is apparently no command to take that email and put it into my gnus system. I tried all kinds of temporary secondary server methods, then just ended up renaming the mail file to the next nnml number, killing emacs, and doing what you're not supposed to do: editing .newsrc.eld and the active file. I think a small set of importation commands (and nuclear-option restart commands) would be great. In particular something that abstracted out the whole nndoc-respooling process, with some sort of unwind protection, so that the inevitable blowups didn't wreck one's whole installation. That might be a daunting amount of work, but anyway I think it would make things a lot more friendly for new users… Thanks, Eric