Re: Searching emails on an IMAP server?

[Niklas Morberg <niklas.morberg@axis.com>]

Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de> writes:

> Niklas Morberg <niklas.morberg@axis.com> writes:
>
>> Maybe I could run a cron job that copies mail off my IMAP
>> server and stores them locally (just like Zoe)?
>
> That would be possible, though with the Agent, Gnus can do it.

I'll take a look at the agent again. I tried it out for
about a year ago, but got into a some problems with marks
not being preserved when moving messages. Since then I've
stopped using marks so it really doesn't matter.

Is any of the search engines currently supported by Gnus
"better" than the others?

>> Or maybe use Zoe just as an email fetch script and use another
>> search engine to index them? A Zoe backed to gnus would be another
>> option, but I don't think I could pull off writing one.
>
> How does one talk to Zoe?

Zoe has an HTTP interface. See screenshot at
<URL:http://zoe.nu/itstories/story.php?data=stories&num=23&sec=2>.

> Writing a backend is not that difficult. The backend
> interface is documented well enough, and you don't
> have to understand why all the functions are supposed
> to be present, you just implement what it says in the
> documentation and all is well.

Would the best option be to implement a new backend, or
"just" add a new search engine to nnir.el? (I was thinking
about the latter in my original post.)

My biggest gripe with Zoe is that it is very slow if there
are a lot of hits to your search. For now, I'll boot up the
agent and see how it pans out.

> The most difficult part for me was to understand the
> terminology. But the terminology is explained in the node
> "Back End Interface".

Thanks for the pointer, I'll keep it for future reference.

Niklas