That backup thing...

[Norman Walsh <norm@berkshire.net>]

Hmmm, I gather from the followups to my earlier query that there's no
easy way to setup gnus to make backups of expired mail.  Bummer.

Ok, I'll update my old nnmh scripts to handle nnml and skip the idea of
moving to nnfolder for the time being.  That said, I get the distinct
impression that I'm going to have to be a little more careful with nnml
than I was with nnmh.  

To that end, I think there are a few things I better figure out.  (Oh,
and naturally, I wouldn't hack any of these files while gnus was
running.)

I see in .newsrc.eld:

  ("emacs.ding" 3 ((1 . 232)) ((reply 195 203) 
     (tick (1 . 8) 152 168 195 197 205 208)))

>From which I gather that "emacs.ding" (~/Mail/emacs/ding/*) contains
messages numbered from 1 to 232 and that messages 1 to 8, 152, 168,
195, 197, 205, and 208 are marked as "undeleted".  All the rest I can
backup and rm (if they meet my other criteria).  The "(reply ...)" 
field is pretty obvious, but what does "3" mean after emacs.ding?
Are there other things that might occur in this list?

Next, in ~/Mail/emacs/ding/.overview I see one line per message.  I assume
if I delete ~/Mail/emacs/ding/9, I should delete the line that begins
/^9\t/ from .overview as well.

Finally, I see in ~/Mail/active:

  emacs.ding 232 1 y

What does this mean?  And what other things might it say?

--norm