Re: New mail appears to be old?!

[Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com>]

Dan Christensen <jdc+news@uwo.ca> writes:

> Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:
>
>> PPS- As a timely test for your current problem, you can view
>> the new mail files that gnus creates for you in ~/Mail/Incoming* with
>> G f (nndoc) to see what was actually collected in a retrieval by 
>> `G f Mail/MOST_RECENT_Incoming*'.  
>
> Hmm, it's too bad that `G D', which creates an nneething group,
> assumes that each file is one message.  Wouldn't it be nice if
> one could view a directory of mbox-style files as one newsgroup?

I guess it would have to be a kind of Meta backend that encompassed
several backend formats.

Here is some food for thought along that line.  WIBNI we had functions
as part of gnus that could read a spool file like mbox and spit out
any of the other backend styles.  We do something like that already
with the spit rules or respool function but it is really clunky to use
unless you want to respool some non-main backend to your main backend.

I have developed awk scripting that does something like that, Peter
Acklam has posted perl scripting that handles some conversions.  With
those methods, gnus knows nothing of the work done and must be told
after the fact.

How about elisp that does it for us?  Something where you could aim
the function at a a directory containing a number of mbox files and
gnus would be smart enough to id the spools and convert them to your
choice. Creating new directories etc as needed.  Just as it now does
in a normal split or respool.

Only in this case one would be spared the need to go to the group,
mark the messages for respool and run `B r'.  Instead gnus would
query the user for a FROM backend name, a TO backend name and a list
of directories or files.  Then when you press <RET> gnus would do the
conversion enmasse.