Re: Streamlining first-time Gnus usage

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

On Fri, Dec 17 2010, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen wrote:

> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>
>> 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.
>
> Right.  That's probably not been tested a lot.  Do you remember what
> went wrong?

Just plain old parsing errors, I think. The error messages weren't that
helpful, it just told me a message couldn't be read, and that threw the
whole enchilada out the window.

>
>> 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.
>
> This is one of the reasons the .newsrc.eld file looks like it does -- so
> that nobody would be tempted to edit it.  I mean, nobody tries to edit,
> say, Thunderbird data files by hand...  perhaps Gnus should start
> base64-ing the file before saving it.  :-)

I think import commands with error recovery would keep people from being
tempted to mess directly with that file (no obfuscation please!). But
the fact is, once something gets out of sync between what's in your
.newsrc.eld/active files, and what's actually in your directories,
you're pretty screwed.

>
>> 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.
>
> nndir/nneething + `B c' should do the trick?

I tried "directory", "maildir" and "file" in my mail sources, and
neither were able to parse the (gnus-produced) mail file, both left a
mail import crash log in my home directory. I don't know any other way
of getting mail into gnus. Anyway, I guess the point isn't solving my
particular problem here, but just to say that this whole area is far
from obvious, and I think a prime candidate for newbie-oriented
smoothing. Why not have a 'gnus-snarf-mail' command that can be pointed
at an mbox, a single-mail file or a directory, and then be reasonably
expected to spool those mails into its servers?

Why not, indeed, except that someone would have to write it. :)

E