From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/68491 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Jan Rychter Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Abandoning the concept of groups as a storage medium? Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:05:09 +0200 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1240670662 24057 80.91.229.12 (25 Apr 2009 14:44:22 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 14:44:22 +0000 (UTC) To: ding@gnus.org Original-X-From: ding-owner+M16926@lists.math.uh.edu Sat Apr 25 16:45:41 2009 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 4.50) id 1Lxj87-0003i9-MW for ding-account@gmane.org; Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:45:23 +0200 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 1Lxj5l-0005vH-OP; Sat, 25 Apr 2009 09:42:57 -0500 Original-Received: from mx2.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.33]) by util0.math.uh.edu with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1LxelK-0004Wx-Gn for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Sat, 25 Apr 2009 05:05:34 -0500 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.231.51]) by mx2.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LxelE-0007sK-02 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Sat, 25 Apr 2009 05:05:34 -0500 Original-Received: from main.gmane.org ([80.91.229.2] helo=ciao.gmane.org) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian)) id 1Lxele-0002Bz-00 for ; Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:05:54 +0200 Original-Received: from list by ciao.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.43) id 1Lxel6-0001c3-EV for ding@gnus.org; Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:05:20 +0000 Original-Received: from bk-gw.rychter.com ([85.222.88.19]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:05:20 +0000 Original-Received: from jan by bk-gw.rychter.com with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:05:20 +0000 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 33 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: bk-gw.rychter.com X-Spammers-Please: blackholeme@rychter.com User-Agent: Gnus/5.110011 (No Gnus v0.11) Emacs/23.0.60 (darwin) Cancel-Lock: sha1:NPUb2BlnwWXtnYyBQatF/N6LfbE= X-Spam-Score: -3.6 (---) List-ID: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:68491 Archived-At: Here's some context: I've been a Gnus user for the last 13 years or so. I use nnml as my mail backend. I used Linux for ten years, then moved over to Mac OS X. You might say I'm not exactly a newbie. I've always been trying to make my mail searchable. I tried namazu in the past, but it didn't work well for my volume of mail. I hacked a plugin for Spotlight that indexes an NNML spool. It works, but needs polishing, and is only useful for finding a single E-mail message. Then I discovered mairix and nnmairix. They are close to what I need, but there is the issue of flag propagation, which nnmairix doesn't do for an NNML spool. Which brings me to my main point. I believe the notion of splitting all mail into groups is fundamentally flawed. Yes, it makes sense for mailing lists, but it doesn't for pretty much anything else. I would much rather assign tags and have a good search interface. I want to access my mail in a multitude of ways, searching by date, sender, tags, and picking out entire conversations (threads). I want to be able to set flags and tags on *any* E-mail message *anywhere*, not just in the "real group it belongs to". I don't want my "groups" to have anything to do with the way my messages are stored. E-mail should be stored in a key/value store with metadata copied and indexed separately. The problem I see with Gnus is that it is designed around a central concept of a mail backend which exposes groups. The registry, if I understand correctly, is a workaround for some of the problems people encountered with this approach. Is there any way to achieve what I want with Gnus? Is anybody working on something of the kind? What would be the possible approaches? --J.