Re: maildir - whats the skinny?

[Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com>]

"Matt Armstrong" <matt+dated+1007770937.e3ec50@lickey.com> writes:

> Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:
>
>> If I have procmail writing to maildir and creating directories as
>> needed, then writing the numbered messages under that directory.  Do I
>> need to tell gnus about teh subdirectory?
>
> I believe the answer is yes -- I think it'd be a new mail source of
> type "maildir".

Looks like it.  So this may not be a good technique for what I'm
doing.  Although it probably wouldn't be that hard to scan the
directory on the fly with a function hooked into mail collection some
how, and use that info to generate a dynamic list to pass to gnus
collection tools.

May not be worth all that.  And I don't know how to do it anyway.

[...]

> The only way I know of for Gnus to automatically discover new groups
> based on procmail output is with the "directory" style mail-source.  I
> have this in my .gnus:

[...]

Yeah, that is the cannonical way.  And I've used it for some time so
am familiar with it.

> But this expects unix mbox files with a .spool suffix to be in that
> dir, not maildirs.

The mbox technique was my first thought.  And I have that working now.

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.

Here is the problem briefly.   I'm funneling an nntp feed directly
into formail/procmail and writing mbox files based on the newsgroup
name plus a local prefix and suffix, for other purposes.

It allows a direct conversion of news to mail, and gnus promptly
writes them to nnml groups thus exposing news to all the functions and
cool techniques that can be applied to mail.

One pitfall I've run into is that NNTP output is not all that
clean. It is supposed to be in a certain format:

That is, messages begin with `Path: ' header and end with a dot on a
line by itself, then a blank line (I think), That is mostly what comes
down the wire, but some are different and have the Path header after
several other headers or the like.  Some have no blank line.

`formail' is able to discern the `Path: ' header but gets confused
when it isn't the lead header.  Sometimes writing several messges from
one nntp message.  A case in point is the faq posted for the newsreader
nn. It doesn't start with Path: but it does have lots of short
sections.  Each beginning with what `formail' thinks are more message
headers.

consequently it writes several dozen 5 and 6 line messages from that
one nntp message.

So far I've just coralled those misfits into there own NO_PATH group.
Probably just ignore it.  But I think there may be some other stuff that
will turn up like messages from mail to news converters where some
mailling list is converted to news and piped onto usenet.

I may have to abandon the `formail' part of my filter and write my own
awk scripting that can deal with messages regardless of how they
begin.  Maybe by dealing only with the dot on a line by itself to
invoke the action needed to write the message to my spool directory.

That isn't a very hard task I don't think, and would still allow
procmail to do the heavy work, locking and so forth. so that may allow
me to use the normal procmail proceedure with gnus.

Currently I have:
nntpserver_output =>|formail procmail => spool/mboxfiles \
=>gnus =>nnml

So I may try it like:
nntpserver_output =>|scripting|procmail => spool/mboxfiles \
=>gnus =>nnml


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.

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.