Re: problem with pop3 nnml and default dir

[David Z Maze <dmaze@MIT.EDU>]

Uwe Brauer <oub@mat.ucm.es> writes:

> Most likely I misunderstand something fundamental.
> I want to read mail from a pop3 server and thought of using the
> following setting
>
> Until now I read some mail from a pop3 server by the following
> setting:
> (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
> '(nnfolder "/home/oub/Mail/Pop3-GMX"))
>  (eval-after-load "mail-source"
>    '(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(pop :server "blabl"
>                                      :user "bloblo")))
>
> That sort of works but gnus happily ignores the string 
> "/home/oub/Mail/Pop3-GMX"
> it puts the mail in the file 
> misc in 
> /home/oub/Mail/mail

From info://gnus/Mail+Folders, it looks like the select-method you
want is

(nnfolder "Pop3-GMX" (nnfolder-directory "/home/oub/Mail/POP3-GMX"))

You shouldn't think of this as "reading mail from a POP3 server" as
though the mail lives on the server; Gnus is reading and deleting all
of the messages off the POP server (as described in mail-sources) and
storing them in your nnfolder group(s) according to
gnus-split-methods.

> How can I set a special directory or file for my pop3 messages? The
> documentation is not very helpful.

(That is, this is an nnfolder question, not a POP question.)

> Besides I now start to use the nnml backend. When I respool mail from
> my nndoc folders, they end up in the mail/misc directory, since this
> directory is the default for respooling but of course if I would like
> the nnml backend for pop3 I would end up in a mess since the
> directories for the pop3 and the default nnml group are the same, 

What distinction are you trying to draw?  Gnus is perfectly happy
storing mail in one place from multiple different sources.  In fact,
trying to segregate mail you pick up from multiple mail providers is a
little tricky.

So right now you have an nnfolder secondary select method.  When Gnus
starts, it asks nnfolder to pick up its mail, which it does by
consulting mail-sources.  Switching nnfolder to nnml doesn't change
this process, just where the mail is stored once it gets pulled off
the POP server.

HTH,

  --dzm