Re: how does expiry-target work?

[Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann)]

On 09 Dec 2000, Jan Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
> Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:
> 
>> Why does using pick require that you use nnmh and not nnml?
>> Reading nnml groups works just fine using the MH tools, but you
>> have to be extremely careful not to modify the ~/Mail directory in
>> any way.
> 
> Ah, of course!  And, what if I do modify the ~/Mail directory by
> accident,

Then you must be careful to rebuild the information that Gnus has.
For example, if you delete a message, the corresponding .overview
entry needs to be deleted, too, as well as the entry in .newsrc.eld.
And possibly the active file needs to be adjusted.

As you can see, don't modify the ~/Mail directory outside of Gnus.
Gnus will get very angry at you.

> or as a variation on that question, how can I convert my nnmh groups
> to nnml?  I guess that nnml is one of *the* backends to use, right?

The generic way to do this would be to copy the old groups someplace
safe, then create new nnml groups.  Copy each old group to the new
group by opening the file with `G f' or the directory with `G D' (in
the nmh case, it's a directory), then `M P a' for marking all
messages, then `B m' to move them.  This way, you lose the marks.

I think I converted to nnml by cheating.  You could replace all
occurrences of `nnmh' in .newsrc.eld with `nnml', then `M-x
nnml-generate-nov-databases RET'.

> Btw, I fixed a bug in my expiry-target patch for nnmh.  I've been
> using it now for a few days, and it seems to work fine.  Maybe
> you(?)  want to include it in Gnus?

I've put it off, but I want to.

> As you can see, I'll have to look at nnir.el first, google will
> probably help me.  But, I've always found pick to be very effective,
> (and didn't get immediate scoring to work.  will look at nnir) it is
> one of the two last nmh features I still use.

ftp://ls6-ftp.cs.uni-dortmund.de/pub/src/emacs/

You should be able to find nnir.el there.  My idea was that it just
invokes pick and then shows you a summary buffer for a temporary
virtual group with the results.

> The other one is not really an nmh feature: I've written a crude
> script ``rpatch' that reads the current message, tries various
> unpack methods to find the patch, find a sensible name if none is
> specified, eg (<package>-<version>.<emailadrress>.diff.gz>) patches,
> save and possibly apply it (to LilyPond).  Maybe you happen to have
> some lisp code that does parts of that?

Well, you can use `|' to pipe the current message through any script,
including `rpatch', I guess.

kai
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